Priorities

Apparently there is a big wedding happening in the UK soon. Personally, I'm not a big fan of the Royal Family. I'm not a republican - aside from anything else, I'm not convinced a president is necessarily a better option. So Prince William and Kate Middleton are getting married - I have no real opinion on this, other than to wish two people well: I won't be getting an invite, which saves me a dilemma, but not much of one.

This morning, I was in the room with someone who was watching BBC News. The item of 'news' they were covering concerned this wedding, in which I have little or no interest. The groom, apparently, will be giving the bride his ring, but will not be wearing a ring himself. This does not concern me; or you, unless you are one of the two people getting married (which I doubt). The show's editors, however, felt the need to run an item about this non-story for several minutes. They interviewed two 'experts' - I make no effort to check their qualifications - and several members of the public.

It won't surprise you to learn that I became increasingly irritated as this item wore on. This was partly because, as hinted at above, I'm not a huge fan of the Royal Family; it's also because I'm an irritable so-and-so anyway. Was there not, I asked myself, anything more important happening in the world? There was, and is: the story immediately before this piece of nonsense, informed us that Libyan civilians have been killed in a coalition air-strike. They had dedicated less than thirty seconds to that.

All of this probably makes me seem overly earnest, and perhaps naive. I accept that news programmes have to strike a balance (and I am a big fan of BBC news in general); I accept that the world isn't all doom-and-gloom (although it certainly seems like it some days); but surely, a serious news programme can do so much better than waste time on a matter that has little interest, beyond the two people immediately involved.