Law passed, things expected to stay pretty much the same

After months of rumblings and tremors, the imminent oil exploration and the Falklands were last week cast onto the media spotlight amid a newsprint ejaculation of scaremongering, exaggeration and conjecture that couldn't have been more sensationalistic if it had included Dad's Army's Private Frazer exclaiming "We're doomed!" after every article.

All it took was a new Argentine law that requires ships that sail via here from or to Argentina to obtain a licence. Irritating, perhaps, but hardly the harbinger of an apocalypse that newspapers would have us believe. Dare I use an example applicable to today's youth and suggest that if all this was going on on Facebook, the law would be little more than a snide Argentine comment under the Falklands' status.

Eyes wide shut

Among the significant dates which may have passed unnoticed by readers of The Beak is February 2nd, which is celebrated in the USA and Canada as Groundhog Day, when the emergence from hibernation of a small beaver-like creature is taken as an excuse for all sorts of craziness. Since 1993 and the screening of a film called Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray as a TV reporter who gets stuck in time while reporting this event, the expression has come to mean something akin to a rather severe case of déjà vu.