Channel migrants: man in flippers attempts channel swim

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Graeme Fraser

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Direct quote from BBC News website:

"A migrant has been rescued as he tried to swim across the English Channel to the UK with flippers and a float. The man - who was suffering from mild hypothermia - was picked up by the French authorities at 07:30 BST about three miles north of Calais."

This is disturbing. Despite several warnings, the BBC still insist on using the term flippers instead of fins! Why should I continue to pay my license fee for this drivel!
 
Mammals have flippers, fish have fins!
 
Mammals have flippers, fish have fins!

Please don't make me acknowledge defeat to the beeb, I couldn't bear it :facepalm:Even if they have somehow stumbled on the correct biological vernacular, I'm pretty sure it's by chance, not accurate research.
 
Lorry or truck, lift or elevator, biscuits or cookies, football or soccer?
 
So by BBC standards, flippers?
 
Direct quote from BBC News website:

"A migrant has been rescued as he tried to swim across the English Channel to the UK with flippers and a float. The man - who was suffering from mild hypothermia - was picked up by the French authorities at 07:30 BST about three miles north of Calais."

This is disturbing. Despite several warnings, the BBC still insist on using the term flippers instead of fins! Why should I continue to pay my license fee for this drivel!

TBH I read that as a man wearing flip flops. Anyway, he did pretty well to get nearly to Calais. If we have light winds in November I think we will be see more people trying to escape to France like this.
 
Perhaps a revision for the next edition of the BBC Style Guide, assuming they still have such things.
As someone who loves to finswim, I agree with the use of the term "fins".
This could be the next ultraendurace aquatic event.
 
TBH I read that as a man wearing flip flops. Anyway, he did pretty well to get nearly to Calais. If we have light winds in November I think we will be see more people trying to escape to France like this.

That's the part I don't quite get: it says he was swimming to the UK???

(A somewhat related sidenote, Russian word for "flippers", as in what mammals have, is also the correct word for swimming/diving fins. Which makes it even more grating when people use the word for fishes' fins instead. And they do, of course.)
 
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