Thursday, 27 February 2014

Cracking Daily Mail headline

Mother of Towie star is crushed to death in freak accident inside barn at her £500,000 Essex home

My latest blogpost: Cracking Daily Mail headlineTweet this! Posted by Mark Wadsworth at 14:26

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12 comments:

DBC Reed said...

This is more true to form but Mail readers are complaining in readers comments underneath that it is tasteless to mention house prices in the context of tragic deaths.Good God: What is happening?

28 February 2014 at 15:49
Derek said...

£500,000 and it still looks like it needs work done on the roof. Going by the photo there's a curve on the ridge and that's never good.

28 February 2014 at 16:12
DBC Reed said...

@D I noticed the sags in the roof but blindsided by the sudden tastefulness of the DM readers felt I should n't mention it.

28 February 2014 at 16:34
Derek said...

The tastefulness must have had some effect on the DM subeditors too. I see that the headline no longer mentions the £500,000 although it still shows up in the article.

28 February 2014 at 17:04
Bayard said...

Derek, I think, behind that 1950's exterior, there's a historic building struggling to get out, so a bit of dip in the ridge is probably OK. As for the half-mil price tag, well, it's location, innit?

28 February 2014 at 17:39
Mark Wadsworth said...

DBC, D, yes, the Daily Mail often changes the headline and the first few sentences in the light of comments… but they seldom change the URL which still flaunts the £500,000 figure :-)

28 February 2014 at 18:55
DBC Reed said...

@B I hate to mention it in the outbreak of DM tastefulness and restraint but the subject of this story was killed when the barn roof fell in,so you can't be sure" a bit of a dip in the ridge is probably OK."

28 February 2014 at 20:46
Bayard said...

DBCR, if I knew that the "brick shed" had been built at the same time as and to the same form of construction as the main house, then, yes, I'd have my doubts about the house too, but it is much more likely that the "brick shed" was built at a different time in a different way and therefore the fact that it collapsed is probably in no way relevant to the stability of the house.

1 March 2014 at 09:56
DBC Reed said...

@B
So the obvious dips in the house roof line tastefully referred to by myself and Derek and the fact that another roof caved in with fatal consequences is "in no way relevant"? I would have though it relevant to the whole house-price inflation campaign the DM has been running for years (wage increases bad; house price increases good) because people are being forced to live in very small dodgily constructed houses
because they cannot afford houses of conventional construction.

1 March 2014 at 10:22
Bayard said...

It was a shed, FFS. There is nothing in the article to suggest that it was a part of the house, or even connected to the house. If it had been, it would have described as "part of the house" or "the house" and not as "a barn", or as "a brick shed". Would you get a surveyor to check your house if your garden shed blew down?

1 March 2014 at 18:53
DBC Reed said...

The owner could n't get a check on the barn roof because it killed her. In the present circumstance I think a check on the house roof would be prudent, don't you? It having a dirty great dip in it and all?

2 March 2014 at 09:51
Bayard said...

Well, seeing that the house roof has just passed a "stress test" that the shed failed, I think the new owner would be wasting their money, but yes, anyone buying an old house should always have things like a dip in the ridge checked out to see if what caused it has been sorted out or whether the roof is still moving. In cases like this, it is usually simpler and cheaper to cure the problem (e.g. a spreading truss) than remove the symptoms (the dip in the roof).

2 March 2014 at 11:05

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