By Steve Stratford, Deputy Editor
Even being in a job where you hear about terrible things happening in the world almost on a daily basis, sometimes stories still have the power to shock a journalist.
Take today, for instance... I've been reading about two appalling incidents of cruelty that beggar belief.
I was appalled to read about the poor terrapin which was strapped to a rocket firework and launched hundreds of feet into the air on Bonfire Night. The poor creature was found - amazingly, alive! - in a Wrexham woman's flowerbed by her pet dog. The terrapin suffered a cracked shell and a cut to its mouth, but it must have been absolutely terrified while it was being taped to the firework, and then launched into the night sky before surviving an explosion of light and flame.
It's not funny. It's easy to laugh, but just who did that? Who thought that was a good idea, that it was funny? The RSPCA's Judith Haw said it was the most callous and sick act of cruelty she had seen in all her time working for the Society.
Then there's the report of the 15-year-old Holywell schoolgirl who stubbed a cigarette out in another girl's eye. Luckily, the victim managed to close her eye in time, and save her eyesight. The defendant has been ordered to pay £500 compensation and has been placed on a 12-month referral order with the youth offending service.
Maybe I should be numb to reports such as this by now, but sometimes you read something and you think: "Hold on, what is the world coming to?" I'm reading of crimes in the streets of North Wales which I couldn't think up in my wildest nightmares. Launching a pet terrapin into the sky on a firework? Stubbing a cigarette out in someone's eye? It's like the storyline from a Tobe Hooper horror film!
I don't know... Maybe I'm losing my professional detachment and actually reacting to the news like the average reader does, with horror and disgust. Because it is easy to become immune to acts of mindless, pointless cruelty like this when you're hearing about it as part of your job. And it's on days like these - when I read stories like those mentioned - that I realise that maybe we're all becoming a little too immune to things like this.
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Vincent McKenzie wrote...
Where do you begin. I have noticed that hardly anyone bothers to comment here! Wonder why? Could it be the same reason why only about 40% of the electoret bother to vote.
Nobody cares about these things anymore. If you try to speak out against the flow of degeneration, you become stigmatised and branded a looney. What does anybody intend to do about these things....Nothing but sigh and gasp. Things are obviously not bad enough then are they!
My opinion.... the looney liberal leftist knutters are running the asylum.
Posted by: Vincent McKenzie | November 23, 2007 2:12 PM