In a 360 word report, BBC Scotland finds no space to tell you that Network Rail is responsible to the UK Government only, for ‘national security reasons’ like ports and airports.
Network Rail is an “arm’s length” public body of the Department for Transport with no shareholders, which reinvests its income in the railways. Network Rail’s main customers are the private train operating companies (TOCs), [such as Scotrail] responsible for passenger transport, and freight operating companies (FOCs), who provide train services on the infrastructure that the company owns and maintains.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Rail
The deaths are NOT due to any action or inaction by ScotRail or the Scottish Government.
Why did this happen?
The horrifying train wreck near Stonehaven, Scotland, last week, was the result of the dilapidated condition of Britain’s rail infrastructure. Starved for decades of essential maintenance funding, the railways have been transformed by successive governments into state-subsidised cash cows for private corporations.
Network Rail’s cost-cutting: It carried out a reduction of its maintenance staff by 12 percent between 2009/10 and 2013/14, down by 2,169 to 15,813. Then it set a target of 2019 of further cost-cutting of 20 percent.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/19/ston-a19.html
What is BBC Scotland hoping viewers will think?
Hours after the incident in August 2020, on BBC Scotland’s The Nine, viewers saw James Cook, repeatedly interrupt the Scottish Transport Secretary, Michael Matheson to say:
Well, exactly! Well, that’s rather the point! Isn’t it. We hear that there are these problems. In 2014, a report specifically mentioned this exact area being greatly affected by earth-slips. A report last month warned that there had been over six times more flooding events in the year to 2019/20 and earthworks failures nearly trebled. Did you read that report? And if so, what action did your government take on it?
Let’s be clear. Rail infrastructure, the track, the signals and related hardware, and critically, the prevention of landslips onto the track, is a reserved matter, presumably in case the UK Government ever feels the need to use it for some strategic purpose which the Scottish Government might object to and try to obstruct.
Full responsibility for the funding, the maintenance, the inspection and the warning to operators of risk, lies with the UK agency Network Rail which in turn is responsible, only, to the UK Minister. The report was a report for that UK minister and though the Scottish Government may or may not have received a copy, it could not have acted upon it.
Why was Cook not aggressively asking Grant Shapps, the UK Minister for Transport, the questions he misleadingly threw at Matheson?
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
“Why was Cook not aggressively asking Grant Shapps, the UK Minister for Transport, the questions he misleadingly threw at Matheson” ?
I think I know this one.
Is it because in NOT highlighting the very PERTINENT fact that Network Rail is the responsibility of the UK Government and thus under the remit of the UK Transport minister….. then he , Cook, NOT “aggressively asking Grant Shapps” (the then Transport minister) relevant questions that clearly demonstrate to the readers it was under HIS watch that this occurred and thus the buck stopped with HIM and his government….then , as a written piece, the reader is no further forward as to who is to really blame and whose responsibility this rail network falls under but it COULD somehow be the Scottish government as somehow responsible and to blame….also known as , via the BBC, job done. (another one……
BUT him, Cook, being more assertive ?…..more ambiguous ?…..and indeed misleading in his line of questioning with OUR Transport Secretary it then somehow infers that he, Mathieson, and OUR Scottish government must take their share ( or all ) of the blame and responsibility….an inference made via omission of who is solely responsible for Network Rail , the TONE taken by the writer and too the one who asked the “misleading” Q’s and penned this piece…..
as in James Cook from the BBC. ….the BBC…who are British in name (via corporation title) but very much hostile to the part within their Britain that is called……. Scotland.
Tis not a unique event this type of churnalism via James Cook or the BBC….indeed tis as predictable a piece that we have come to expect from him and them…..to include the pieces he and they ‘do to camera’ via the ‘News where we are ‘ as ‘Dictated elsewhere’…..every little bit helps….that is they HOPE it helps to destroy confidence in the SNP as a competent government which they ultimately hope will then reap, as a result, a decline in seats for the SNP in subsequent elections….and too dissuade people, who as yet are still unconvinced, from considering changing their minds in supporting Scottish independence….THAT is the REAL road the BBC are always travelling down in their ‘news’ coverages in Scotland……STOPPING INDEPENDENCE for SCOTLAND….
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HS2 the biggest waste of public monies. The Scottish railways and the North need funding. To improve services and cut travel times in Britain. The Tories are beyond the pale at wasting public monies and causing deaths. Not long to go now.
UK Gov raising £631Billion. Spending £1000Billion in the rest of the UK. Scotland has to pay the debt repayments. Westminster blatant appalling policies and mismanagement, causing death and destruction. Brexit a catastrophe.
Scotland raising £87Billion. Spending £54Billion. What is happening to the rest. Westminster lies and distortion kept secret under the Official Secrets Act.
UK /Scottish Gov Accounts. On the internet.
Airbnb. A sledge hammer to crack a nut. Ridiculous. Green not thought through again.
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Cook is completely ignorant and arrogant. Just like the rest of the BBC main employees. No wonder no one watches the embarrassment. Cut the budget.
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there seems to be more Scottish stories appearing on the main BBC News at 6′ , maybe to compensate for poor viewing figures for the BBC Scotland News at 6-30.
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And on ITN News and Channel 4. Those that I have viewed tend to frame the report in a ‘Scotland bad’ way.
For example a report on the AirB’n’B by ITN was like a PR release by the landlords in Scotland.
Last night on Ch4 News the unpleasant Ciaran Jenkins framed the ‘crumbling concrete in schools’ as having been a Scottish problem, in that the RAAC beams had been identified at the Queen Victoria School in Dunblane several weeks ago, but had only come to light now after the Education Secretary, Gillian F****** Keegan made a statement in the past few days to seek to divert blame from her own Government. Jenkins was implying that the Scottish Government in some way tried to ‘hide’ this.
Jenny Gilruth was interviewed by Kathryn Samson, the new anti-Scottish Scotland correspondent who began aggressively. However, Ms Gilruth pointed out the Queen Victoria was run by the MoD, i.e. by the UK Government and, if the inspection had identified RAAC it had not been notified to the local authority, which is who run all public schools in Scotland and who carry out checks of building fabric and report to the SG. Ms Gilruth pointed out that she and the SG had NOT been informed by the MoD and so were not in a position to cover up.
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The answer probably lies in an email only the BBC in Scotland and James Cook have seen despite neither the sender nor recipient having seen it…
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Folk seem to forget that we nearly had another major rail accident when the piers of a bridge near Lamington in South Lanarkshire were found to be in a dangerous condition. It was only a chance observation that it was caught on time as the inspection regime was found to be totally inadequate.
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