A weekly round-up of London’s rail transport news…
The image above is from Dec 2020: Thameslink is back on the London tube map
London Underground
Tenders have been called for the modification of the 63 seven-car Type 96TS trainsets used on London Underground’s Jubilee Line to provide a long-term solution to fatigue cracking. Railway Gazette (£)
Dagenham Heathway Tube station will not need to be closed because of flooding after repairs to the roof, Transport for London (TfL) has pledged. Local London
Elizabeth line / Crossrail
Crossrail: adding a vibrant mix of commercial, residential and retail property above the Elizabeth line Arup
London’s newest railway could be about to get its first train strike, as the TSSA union has started balloting members on the Elizabeth line for strike action over pay. ianVisits
Mainline / Overground
Passengers were facing rush hour chaos at Euston after a day of delays, with some complaining of being stuck on trains for hours without food or water. Standard
Chiltern Railway’s last Parliamentary Train from West Ealing ianVisits
MPs furious at Southeastern scrapping hundreds of daily services to and from central London Standard
Stark north-south divide in railway reliability, UK figures reveal The Guardian
Miscellaneous
A woman whose two children were arrested after one had forgotten their Oyster card has said they were treated with disproportionate force because of the colour of their skin. The Guardian
Prosecutors want a retrial of anti-HS2 protesters who occupied tunnels near Euston station – after charges against them were dismissed on a ‘trivial’ technicality, the High Court has been told. Daily Mail
Just in time to appear under a Christmas tree near you, is a LEGO compatible London Underground train kit based on the S-Stock trains. ianVisits
What Does 2023 Look Like for TfL’s Brand Licensing Program? License Global
London restaurants have warned they will haemorrhage sales should planned railway strikes go ahead this month, as union bosses rejected a new pay offer over the week. CityAM
Transport for London appointed to prepare Comprehensive Mobility Plan for Chennai Urban Transport News
TfL has outlined a new business plan for the years ahead and says that it needs to make additional cost cuts of around £600 million per year by 2025/26. ianVisits
And finally: Vintage railway film – Operation London Bridge – 1975 YouTube
The image above is from Dec 2020: Thameslink is back on the London tube map
Daily Mail links: Wikipeda deprecates Daily Mail as a reliable news source for referencing in Wikipedia articles, should Ianvisits have a similar policy?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deprecated_sources#Currently_deprecated_sources
That said, the specific article above that was sourced from daily mail seems to have been originated from press association (not that you would know this by reading Daily Mail Online). I spent a little time seeing if there was more reliable source for the news, and found the origination was from PA.
Best of the easily available online links that would be less challenging and shows PA as the source is: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/high-court-euston-montgomery-london-crown-prosecution-service-b1044218.html
I will no more depreciate the Daily Mail than I would a newspaper on the other side of the political spectrum, such as The Guardian or the Morning Star, both of which also regularly appear in the weekly roundup.
Censorship is rather unpleasant.
I have no objections if Ian posts a link to that particular publication but I choose not to read such links and if the topic interests me then I’ll likely google it to see if there is an alternative.
Wikipedians (who debated and voted on the topic) didn’t deprecate the Daily Mail because of where it sits on the political spectrum. (I was not part of the debate.)
The Daily Mail is deprecated (alternative sources should be sought to justify the inclusion of the fact as part of the Wikipedia editorial process), because of many cases of outright misreporting which didn’t stand up to wider independent fact checking, driven by their specific commercial model. All media gets things wrong sometimes, and many will have specific political interpretations and analysis of stories, but are considered sufficiently factually accurate (as a rule) to be referenceable as evidence for a Wikipedia article.
And you can see from the deprecated list that was linked that there are many news sources omitted for similar reasons. Wikipedia deprecation of a specific source is not a ban or censorship, but policy check to prefer other sources for referencing.
My concern was not out of political bias, but of perception of likelihood of accurate reporting, and nothing to do with censorship based on political views. In this specific case, the DM did publish accurately (regardless of whether you liked their specific tone or not) but many would discount the summary and link based on how DM often handles the news.
And DM provided their own “byline” for the story (which wasn’t materially changed from PA version used with credit elsewhere), in effect removing credit from the PA reporter. Not a great start on being authoritative or trustworthy, and therefore the best representation of the specific newsworthy point.
I fully appreciate that you may choose to have a different editorial policy on such matters (as the phrase has it, “you do you”), and the discussion is at an end.
Just for the record, PA – now PA Media – provides reliable stories to all the national papers and the Standard. It is not responsible for the way they handle them and the headlines they write.
In this case it was almost certainly the only media with a reporter in court.
The vintage film was crazy. No barriers around the demolition site and the public just walking on by. Men working in shoes and jackets. Not many hard hats about. And ties, on a worksite!