A good television news item should provide more answers than questions posed, surely?

That was the MGH’s first thoughts when taking in a yarn on Channel 9’s 6pm Brisbane news the other night.

Before an ad break, newsreader Melissa Downes (above) teased us with news that “caught on camera, a car combusts on a southside street”.

And after the break?

“A trainee has had a lucky escape after the ute he was driving exploded into flames following a collision in Brisbane’s north,” Melissa explained.

“The incident at Windsor caught on camera moments after the ute was engulfed in flames…”

Well, the MGH crew was naturally excited to know that in a short ad break, the now inner-Brisbane northside suburb of Windsor had made its way across the river from the southside.

That’s probably never happened before so well done Channel 9 who does boast being the first with the news.

But it’s this talk of a collision that also fascinated the washed up old hacks who compile this column.

To camera, the guy who only until recently had owned a serviceable, drivable ute explained that he was driving to his next job, smelled rubber as he went through a tunnel and pulled over to the side when it was safe to do so after his brakes also failed. And then …. boom!

No mention whatsoever of a previous collision that has sparked – sorry – this vehicle inferno. The MGH’s main concern here is for the driver.

If he has plumb forgotten a collision he’s had at Windsor on the southside and kept driving his ute, perhaps following the suburb across the Story Bridge until it settled in the inner-north where our driver caught up with it and his ute then combusted, he’s going to have a real battle on his hands getting an insurance payout!

***

News Breakfast cohost Lisa Millar was fairly set in her mind this morning as to how those three mongrels who executed in cold blood two young police officers and a citizen in south-western Queensland met their deaths late yesterday.

“How were the perpetrators executed,” she asked Queeensland Police Union’s Ian Leavers.

Oops. In a live interview, we’ll forgive Ms Millar for that little slipup. Well, once at least.

Still determined to know how these mongrels met their maker, she asked Leavers once more: how were those perpetrators executed?

Lisa! Lisa! Lisa!

Police firepower far outweighed that of the perpetrators in the firefight that followed the executions of those young cops and the member of the public just trying to help so maybe the three perpetrators weren’t executed. Just gunned down in a fair old western-style shootout.

And sure. There’s a chance those three lowlifes were executed and apart from close family members there are probably not too many people out there in Bugland now who are going to be upset if they were.

But the MGH just thinks Lisa Millar should leave such findings to any inquest into this sad and very tragic event.