Thank god the weirdos are limited to rugby, eh?

What an unusual and unnecessary way to interpret what I have said.

But that is your OPINION. some people find pranksters funny. Whether you find it funny or not is irrelevant it is a legitimate type of comedy.

I found it funny because it was so bad and so ridiculous that it took up the news for a whole day. It really parodies the press and makes them seem more ridiculous with their fawning over a celebrity and relegating important news off the telly and front pages.


You also seem to find it difficult to separate what happened with what is going on in your head. They talked to two nurses. Not to Kate , not to the patient not to the foetus two nurses. Where you get all this crap about it being upsetting and distressing for the patient is ridiculous.

That is going to be a lot less than than the shiite she will have to put up with from the press for the next 50 years because the press cater for people like you with wall to wall celebrity coverage.

Of course i feel sorry for the nurses caught in the middle of it but a quick i will hand you over to the management should solve the difficulty.

I would guess that when faced with a tricky or delicate situation at work all of us say i will pass you on to the manager, HR, Pr person or whatever

so you dont like some comedy


:1dyu15nn

You write it off how.

You pretend It doesnt exist, you ignore it, you tell people it is irrelevant.

Unfortunately it is not going away and unfortunately it is important. That is why i think it is OK to take the out of the celebrity culture. To make the tabloids look irrelevant, to make the celebrities less important and to highlight the ridiculousness of it all. An example being that this thread will soon be longer than the one on Palestine and i know which one is more important.







I agree with you on that one.

No probs, glad to help. Another point or 2 would be
1/ suicide by hanging is extremely rare for women, they are more likely to o/d or slit their wrists.
2/ killing yourself on your way to work is very strange.
3/ no mention of a suicide note.

mine is on the wall next to king william

Never a truer post posted

Nope, don't see any of that. Just a childish, ill-conceived call. Methinks you're reading waaaaay to much to into it to suit your anti-royal agenda.


Of course, it helps if you actually read what you're replying to, the key phrase being what I actually wrote: "[ipotential [/ifor causing stress to the sick patient and their baby". We're all fully aware they didn't speak to Kate, doesn't change the fact they tried to.




There we go again, making things up. I utterly detest celebrity culture. That doesn't mean I can't see how despicable this 'prank' was.


Not sure they would have been on duty at 4am or 5am. And I imagine they wouldn't expect people to be pranking hospitals in the early hours with the intention of disturbing a sick and pregnant patient. Only a complete tw@ would think that was a good idea. Or indeed, humorous.

imagine if the info they'd received was 'She's just had a miscarriage'
funny, lol, lmao?

You don't prank hospitals end of

on the other similar programme like Dom Jolly etc, they get their 'victims' to sign forms to say that it's fine to air their particular prank, no signature and it's consigned to the dustbin.

At what point did they thinking making a prank call to a hospital (regardless of who the patient is) was in any way amusing? Are 999 prank calls funny?

What a sorry episode.

It was intended to be a prank call. I don't think that they or anyone would have believed that the reception at the hospital would think it was actually the Queen. The prank, and the amusement, (if any) would have been in the conversation.

No doubt to their amazement, they did actually con the receptionist, who was in fact a nurse, covering reception in the early hours. And got put through to the nurse actually caring for the patient.

They then shamefully got this nurse to divulge to them confidential patient data. It doesn't matter who the patient was, this was bang out of order. They had no right at all to the information, and it is on a par with the illicit information obtained by phone hacking - accessing totally private information by deception.

I can see that having unexpectedly fooled reception, and found themselves improbably speaking to Kate's nurse, they got a bit giddy and didn't think it through. But pretending to be teh Queen in a call to the hospital switchboard may have potential for humour; tricking a nurse into releasing confidential patient data does not. Still, at this stage it was only on tape.

What I find hard to believe is that then, the radio station management, having reviewed the call, made the staggering decision to put it out over the airwaves. They are older and wiser heads, and no doubt had access to legal advice if they needed it too, and it is they, more than the novice presenters, who are to blame. They could have congratulated the presenters on their "scoop", but gently explained why they had gone too far, and deleted the tape and sent a private apology to the hospital. Instead, they unbelievably decided it was a fit piece to broadcast.

I have no time for morons who claim this was a prank call just like thousands of other prank calls. It wasn't. The "joke" in most prank calls is that at the end of the call, the truth is revealed, and the humour for the listener is in the reaction of the pranked person. Here, though, the pranked person was never considered. They never gave a moment's thought to her. She was bypassed as pure collateral damage. If they had thought for a minute what position they would put her in, and how mortified she would be that she had been taken in, and put a radio station through which was as a result broadcasting Kate's personal info around the world, maybe they would have taken a different decision.

Of course, it was not predictable that the receptionist would take her own life. It was just predictable that she would be utterly humiliated, mortified and extremely distressed. Not to mention the risk of being involved in data protection and employment consequences. And this is where the morons just don't get it. A "prank" is just that. It's an easy word to understand. So all you need to ask yourself before you choose your victim is, will the victim agree that this was just a prank, and see the funny side? If the answer is a plain "no", then it isn't a prank, but something else. It might have just about been, if when she was taken in, they had immediately disclosed who they really were, in typical prank-show style, and declined to be put through, although I don't see what would have been funny about it myself, but they chose to abandon the "prank" aspect and move on to the new target.

The people who took the decision to broadcast clearly have appalling judgment. I'm sure offences must have been committed and if so they must be prosecuted. They aren't fit to be in charge of a broadcast station and should resign or have their licence pulled.

I'd like to nominate this as post of the year....

Would that be William Of Orange of Battle Of The Boyne fame ?

It could be this place mate:



Right opposite the great deliverer's statue

Perhaps they could use the Gary McKinnon excuse - "you actually owe us one for demonstrating how rubbish your security is."

Quote ="Dita's Slot Meter"I'd like to nominate this as post of the year.... '" +1 Here's another take on the situation from a disinterested spectator: ethicsalarms.com/2012/12/08/the- ... nary-tale/ FWIW I think that the biggest can should be picked up and carried by the station management. With power comes responsibility.

Quote ="Dita's Slot Meter"I'd like to nominate this as post of the year.... '" +1 Here's another take on the situation from a disinterested spectator: ethicsalarms.com/2012/12/08/the- ... nary-tale/ FWIW I think that the biggest can should be picked up and carried by the station management. With power comes responsibility.

To the 'outraged', something like this for me.

[urlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/09/saldanha-prank-quick-judge-slow-learn[/url

Quote ="Gerald Weaver"Here's another take on the situation from a disinterested spectator: ethicsalarms.com/2012/12/08/the- ... nary-tale/ FWIW I think that the biggest can should be picked up and carried by the station management. With power comes responsibility.'" Good article. And I'd agree with where the greatest responsibility lies as well. I feel that some of the reaction, at least, has been OTT. And on the radio this morning I heard that there are now fears that the female DJ could harm herself as a result of the responsibility she feels. I think it would be better for everyone to draw breath and stand back a little before this spirals completely out of control.

Quote ="Gerald Weaver"Here's another take on the situation from a disinterested spectator: ethicsalarms.com/2012/12/08/the- ... nary-tale/ FWIW I think that the biggest can should be picked up and carried by the station management. With power comes responsibility.'" Good article. And I'd agree with where the greatest responsibility lies as well. I feel that some of the reaction, at least, has been OTT. And on the radio this morning I heard that there are now fears that the female DJ could harm herself as a result of the responsibility she feels. I think it would be better for everyone to draw breath and stand back a little before this spirals completely out of control.

I would be pretty certain that the female DJ is experiencing emotions of a similar kind to those experienced by the deceased nurse. But if she is basically a decent person, and I have no reason to doubt it, the media shiitstorm won't have contributed even 1% more to how bad she will be feeling. Whatever the world's media make of it I shouldn't think would make much difference to her, and there's nothing anyone can do about that now.

Plenty of regret and tears from the two Aussie radio presenters.
Anybody would have thought it was [ithem[/i who had killed the unfortunate lady?

I bet they've had death threats through their stations website/facebook page ( unless they stopped the possibility of posting ).

Like the great chicken and egg question: which came first – the infantilised media or the infantilised public it serves by creating an infantilised public discourse?

No market, no media.

If people stop buying/listening to the squawking harridans, they'll shut up eventually.

I did not follow this tragic story but was not the Briitish press at fault? Was she hounded? It may be that she could have got over the initial embarrassment but maybe the press follow us was too much? If so, any organisations concerned should be named, shamed and penalised (along with any complicit editors and proprietors).

No sign of it happening thus far, unfortunately. And so everyone suffered the consequences of a dumbed-down public discourse.

Worth noting: the only two UK national dailies that didn't use this as an excuse to splash yet another royal story over it's front pages on Saturday were the [iFT[/i ands [iThe Morning Star[/i.