Editorial: Raising a glass to bad news turned good

Mark Dawson, editor of Wanganui Chronicle

Reading the news and it sure looks bad, as Joni Mitchell might say.

But is it really so bad?

"Kiwi startup tackles warm beer 'epidemic'" is a headline to grab the attention.

After one too many warm beers, new New Zealand company HUSKI has launched a "revolutionary new product" that keeps beer ice-cold while you drink.

In short, there is a hand-held cooler that keeps your drink on the chilly side, and it is being hailed as some kind of triumph.

A "warm beer epidemic" might sound like the end of civilisation for some but it would be, in fact, a good thing.

Ice-cold beer — now served at just about every bar on the globe — is the problem of epidemic proportions. Firstly, it makes you go to the loo a lot; secondly, it kills the flavour.

I appreciate harping back to the good old colonial days is not the done thing ... but in the good old colonial days, beer was warmer and tastier.

Taking a lead from the motherland of Britain, the serve-at-room-temperature ale was full of restorative and energising nutrients.

Now we suffer a standardised, homogenised glacial glass of bitter blandness with all health-giving properties frozen to death.

In other bad-news-turned-good, it is reported that many of the world's iconic tourist attractions turn out to be rather lacklustre when seen "in the flesh", so to speak.

Here are some of the less-than-rapturous reviews:

The Sistine Chapel is "a small, square box"; Times Square — "lights and terrible big-box retailers"; Buckingham Palace is dubbed "a grotty old pile of wee-yellow stone"; Sherwood Forest — "one big oak in a small forest"; Juliet's balcony in Verona is "just a balcony with a bunch of tourists staring".

So there you have it — travel broadens the mind, but stay home to avoid disappointment.

And, of course, this bad news is good because these famous must-sees are all being over-run by an ever-expanding rabble of tourists and the icons — and the planet in general — would benefit from being less trampled on.

Plus, their magical allure might survive a bit longer.