Colcam

As the BBC and other news channels in Britain continue to give blanket coverage of the killings at Virginia Tech University in the US, a limited amount of airtime was grudgingly given on Wednesday to the horrific events of the day in Iraq where more than 190 were killed and over 200 injured in the series of bomb attacks.

That was only for the major coordinated bomb attacks in Baghdad.

The true figures for the day, if the media could have been bothered researching and reporting, actually added up to 313 killed and 302 injured throughout the country.

The Herald today reports (they too only quote the lower numbers) the comments made by Blair’s Downing Street spokesman yesterday that “the evidence on the ground in Baghdad is that progress is being made."

He added that "determined efforts" were being made by insurgents "to counter that progress".

Such nonsense, surely an insult to any man in the streets intelligence, continued when Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett uttered the usual and oft repeated absurdities about strengthened determination, undermining of democracy, appalling, horrific carnage, importance of the reconciliation process - all the usual platitudes.

By contrast, today (Thursday) has been a relatively ‘quiet’ day in Iraq, with 46 Iraqis killed, 62 Iraqis injured and three US service personnel dead. Two UK soldiers were also killed and three injured, one seriously.

Two days in Iraq, equivalent to 11 Virginia Tech massacres, if you ignore the injured and maimed, is a long way away from Tony Blair's" evidence on the ground in Baghdad that progress is being made," and a sad indictment of the priorities of the mainstream news media in the UK.