Today’s iWeekend title page, clearly completely ignorant and unconcerned, to provide Scots with the truth.
What is the truth?
ScotRail has been named as one of the most reliable train companies in the UK in a new study.
Analysis of official figures for the UK’s 24 major train operators, focusing on the percentage of train journeys either cancelled or delayed by 15 minutes or more, showed ScotRail with the fourth best performance.
The study said on average 3.61 per cent of ScotRail journeys between January 2021 and September 2023 were seriously late or cancelled.
The study was carried out by travel deal site Tripplo, using data from the Office of Rail and Road. According to the analysis, the most reliable train operator in the UK during the period in question was Greater Anglia, which runs services in East Anglia. Second placed was c2c, which operates services in Essex and third slot went to Fhiltern Railways. These top three companies all had less than three per cent of journeys cancelled or badly delayed.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
The I Weekend’s front page is reproduced prominently in the Scotland section of the BBC News website today. One has to magnify the picture on the web page to read the text immediately below the headline which notes: ‘… with Scotrail performing better than most’.
This appearance of the I’s front page on the BBC site provides yet another ‘noteworthy’ example of editorial choices by the BBC in Scotland!
On TuS on December 20 there was a post with this headline: ‘Too positive to be newsworthy? Scotland’s train cancellations found to be lowest of any country or region in Great Britain’. It referred to new analysis of train cancellations across the countries and regions of Great Britain. The post highlighted the finding that overall rail services in Scotland during 2024 had lower rates of train cancellation than any other country or region.
The findings for rail service cancellations in England appeared in the England section of the BBC News website. However, the TuS post noted that notwithstanding the ‘interest’ taken in Scotrail by BBC Scotland, there was no mention of the story on the Scotland page of the BBC News website. Too positive?
Today, December 21, a news story about train cancellations now does appear on the BBC website’s Scotland page. However, it does so ONLY within the site’s regular reproduction of current newspaper front pages. Note the BBC’s choice of introductory headline to this newspaper feature: ‘Scotland’s papers: 800 trains a day cancelled and cosmetics fears’. What does a casual reader of BBC’s coverage of news relevant to Scotland take from that headline I wonder?
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cre7xq3p4j0o
The I’s front page is the first one profiled on the BBC News website’s Scotland section. This is the I’s headline: ‘UK’s worst rail firms cancelling 800 trains a day, ahead of getaway turmoil and storms’.
The BBC has opted to position the I’s front page above those of The Herald, The Scotsman, the Daily Record, the Scottish Daily Mail and The Times, Scotland. Why?
Why the prominence given to this train cancellation story in the I Weekend when the BBC News website has otherwise chosen to ignore the release of train cancellation figures for Scotland. Recall that it did so even though the BBC made much of the findings from the same source, albeit only for England? And why did the BBC choose to introduce as relevant to Scotland the I’s front-page with this headline of its own: ‘Scotland’s papers: 800 trains a day cancelled and cosmetics fears’?
Surely this has not been crafted to imply a big number of train cancellations of relevance to readers and rail users in Scotland?
If the I’s frontage story merits the profile given it today by the BBC on its Scotland web page – and the story of train cancellations merited a full article on the BBC News website’s England section yesterday (plus coverage on Radio 4’s Today programme) – why does Scotrail performing better than its peers NOT merit the attention of BBC Scotland?
Worse than facing a charge of bias by omission, surely the BBC wasn’t seeking to frame and amplify a newspaper’s front page story in a way that implied something negative about Scotland’s rail services? Or is too much exposure to BBC Scotland causing one to be overly suspicious?
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“The I Weekend’s front page is reproduced prominently in the Scotland section of the BBC News website today” (as in front page headline “UK worse rail firms cancelling 800 Trains a day”).
Yes it is, but apparently there can be no distinction, for the media, between those in Scotland and those other rail services elsewhere in the UK as far as Rail firms within the whole UK are concerned.
Once it is identified that Rail firms in other parts of of the UK are #BAD while within Scotland it is reported that “ScotRail are performing better than most” it must then become a UK wide problem with rail firms.
Rinse and repeat.
Noting of course that if something happens which is reported by the media as being a negative in Scotland then the #BAD is always then only confined to be promoted as being #ScotlandBAD and never ever as #UKWideBad.
Actually talking of ‘rinse and repeat’.
Now that we have Keir Starmer as Labour PM , some voters may have be under the misapprehension that , unlike Boris Johnson, Keir would be far better as the new PM and so , some wrongly thought, that he would then make far better decisions and choices as to whom he appointed for certain roles to represent the government and also the UK.
Which was something Boris Johnson was known to be terrible at.
Well Keir Starmer Labour PM has now appointed a Dinosaur to be the new British Ambassador to the US, as in Peter Mandelson.
Which is a scandal also because previously he, Keir Starmer, was confronted by a Journalist in January 2024 at a Q & A session , prior to the GE, who stated this to Starmer:
“The FT did a report this summer (June 2023) on a JP Morgan report which suggested that Peter Mandelson had stayed at the New York townhouse of Jeffrey Epstein in 2009 when he was the defacto PM and while the financier (Epstein) was imprisoned for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Do you think that Lord Mandelson who is, of course, a close political ally of yours, has some questions to answer”
Starmer’s response “On Peter Mandelson look, (Starmer then started to splutter and stutter and so hesitated) and I do try to give full answers in these sessions, I don’t know anymore than you do, and therefore, there’s not really much more that I can add to what you already know (which now Starmer also knows) I’m afraid ( I bet you are), and that’s simply the state of the affairs” (is that his way of saying so shut up about it to this journalist).
So Starmer was given that information in January 2024, which I am sure he already knew anyway, and now post the GE and 11 months after that information was given to him about Mandelson , still he, Starmer, appointed Labour LORD Peter Mandelson for a significant role to represent his Labour government and his UK to America , and of course to liaise with Trump also.
All I can say is WOW, I mean even the Royal family publicly distanced themselves from one of their own for his past relationship with Jeffrey Epstein (and his visit to Epstein’s NY townhouse).
Yet Keir Starmer thinks no big deal , I mean has his HOC’s majority gone to his head that he, like Boris Johnson, now feels emboldened to do anything he wants..
Which BTW would be held against the SNP , by both Labour and the media, if it were them doing a similar thing as Starmer has now done with Mandelson.
Of course this may backfire in more ways than one as it was reported that “A top campaign adviser to US President-elect Donald Trump has called the incoming UK ambassador to the US, Lord Peter Mandelson, “an absolute moron”.
Also Mandelson once said of Trump that he was “little short of a white nationalist and racist”, ” “reckless and a danger to the world” and “a bully”.
Principles Labour ?
We wish.
Honestly who the Hell in Scotland ever thought that Labour and Keir Starmer would ever be those who would give us a “Fresh start” and a “Change” from the previous Tory mob as the UK government , all while Scotland was still chained to their UK, I mean some people should really give themselves a really big shake.
Pass this below quote onto people in Scotland who vote for Labour (and other pro UK parties) and who keep doing this over and over again , in various UK elections, and then keep expecting to both see and experience different and better outcomes only to be disappointed time and time again by those Pro UK parties that they voted for.
‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results“.
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