AIBU to think the Southern Rail strike is not National News?

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

Watching the BBC news at lunchtime. Tiny snippet of news about Aleppo and now massive in-depth coverage of the Southern Rail strike include homevideos of commuters journeys etc.

I understand this is an important issue for those who live within the small area covered by Southern Rail - but does it really merit coverage on the National News - surely should be a local news story?

Southern commuter here.

1. it's not just London, it's the whole of the SE
2. people are losing jobs over it and the region is losing money
3. this has been going on for months and months, the services are unsafe now to travel on
4. the government is using the dispute to break the unions. This has implications for most of us who work.

I can't even begin to tell you the impact this has had on me and thousands of people like me.
Ordinary working people just trying to pay bills.

Yes, which makes it a very important regional story with some, limited, national importance.

It might only be 0.5% but why should the news channels stop reporting on something that affects 300,000 people and on the implications for the future. I seem to remember the floods were at the top of the news for weeks and there were far less people involved then.

One of my DCs works with someone who has to leave his house at 5.30am to get into work, he has two young children, he doesn't see them all week. My DC has to walk for over an hour to get to work after a hit and miss train that might get her to the hours walk. Repeat in the evening, she's knackered.

It's appalling and I hope they keep it at the top of the News until something gets better.

So OP, your issue seems to be not that this was on the national news as a national issue, but that it was reported poorly?

A bit confused about the precise nature of your beef with the story. Should it be confined to local news,or should it be national news with more analysis?

If we're looking only at the numbers affected - well, more people take Southern Trains every day than live in Liverpool. Should we cancel any Liverpool-centric stories? I for one would like to see more stories that affect other parts of the country, but I fear they may not pass your population test.

That surprises me EastMids. The thing is there are huge new projects like Crossrail but that funding doesn't touch the many decrepit parts of the infrastructure. And if one line is completely out for any reason, the knock-on to the rest of the area is massive because we are so squashed together and so numerous.

An MP on the radio said that 23% of all rail users are Southern passengers. That's a pretty wide impact, don't you think?

I wouldn't say it was of "limited national importance"
It's a political story, a major failing taxpayer funded infrastructure project which affects hundreds of thousands of people.

I wasn't directly affected by the regional floods last year but could understand why it made news.

And in most of the rest of the country, there is only one line anyway!

Have a look at the article. Crossrail takes up about a third of the spend. That still leaves the rest of the country hugely under-resourced in comparison. You only have to travel around the country a bit to see how much more public and private sector investment there is in London.

I live in the area affected. People are losing jobs, not able to get home in time to pick kids up from childcare, not getting home at all and having to stay overnight at work throughout the week, and all the while paying thousands of pounds for the privilege.

We can't go anywhere - you have no idea if the trains will even go. If they do go they are late, overcrowded and you are not sure if you'll be able to get home. It's been going on for a very long time.

I work locally but we can't get anyone to come here anymore for meetings as they just won't make it, plus we can't travel to them. It's crippling businesses which has a wider impact than the southern rail region.

I am happy to watch or listen to news about flooding in other parts of the country and other such stories that affect small areas of people but actually have a big impact on lives. Why do you care about Aleppo but not what's happening in another part of your own country? That's weird.

again. It's not just London. I don't live or work in London . By all means have your beef about non London investment but why does that negate national news covering something which impacts so much, and has a huge political angle to boot.

Southern are paid money to run the franchise. Taxpayer money.

Crossrail isn't even open yet EastMids so guess how much of that investment we can see?

You're being a bit placeist. London is the capital and the the wear and tear compared to less populated areas is atrocious. Density is more of an investment driver than per capita.

It might only be 0.5% but why should the news channels stop reporting on something that affects 300,000 people and on the implications for the future

Because it wasn't reporting on the implications for the future. Or the wider ramifications. Or any of the other good reasons that would be of national importance. It was pretty much entirely a human interest story, in a large part focused on randoms phone videos.

Just up to page two. Agree with BillSykesDog. This is about the government breaking the unions. Govia, who run Southern, are paid by the government (actually us) whether the trains run or not. They are compensated by the govt for this shitty treatment of their paid up passengers. They're not a truly private company, but a vehicle for the government to create this standoff and eventually win (see the miner's strike).
I only use Southern every two weeks, but the stress and real misery that had been caused is plain to see every time I make the horrific and unpredictable journey from London to Brighton and back again. People losing jobs over this issue is real.

People are working hard, paying taxes, paying extortionate, extortionate train fares, and they are being treated, as a pp said, like cattle, like pawns, like nothings.. . In the most important city in this fifth or sixth or whatever it is largest economy on Earth!!! Wtf!

I think the government is using this as an experiment in just how much shit people will take, and fuck me it's been a lot.

Oh and all you London haters. We Londoners are interested to learn about floods in Cumbria, miscarriages of justice in Liverpool, broken railways in Devon, miner's battles with police and Scottish existential angst (actually that one did my head in), so fuck off with your whinging 'bout it's all about London. Yet more people falling for the great divide and rule strategy.

So OP if the reporting was more factual, you'd be happy for it to be one of the lead stories on the News for however long it affects all these people?

Yabu, op. It is of national interest given the size of the population affected and the economic implications. It's big scale.

OP if the reporting was more factual, you'd be happy for it to be one of the lead stories on the News for however long it affects all these people?

On reflection (this has been a very useful thread!) Yes, I think one of my main issues with the piece I saw was the lack of reporting. It really was just lots of sad faces saying what a bad commute they had, and at the end a brief shot of the house of commons with a brief mention about curbing the union's.

If all the points raised in this thread: the union's, the job losses, the ownership and governance of the train company etc had been covered then yes it would have been a far better piece and of far more interest nationally.

As a PP said this is endemic to all news now. IMO the news should be presented by knowledgeable people, the story illustrated by facts and if commentary is required it should be from an "expert source". I don't expect the BBC news to be like the DM all sad faces, and crappy quotes, and screenshots of Twitter.

I saw a bit of the news tonight, not much as family all chatting away.

However, the three things I saw were Aleppo, the train dispute and the story about the boy who was killed by a tractor in Leeds.

Now if we are going to go on your premise on what is deemed national news, should any of those actually be aired? Aleppo is not in the UK, the train dispute only affects half a million people and while the story of the boy being killed by a tractor is devastating it doesn't affect anyone in Scotland or the south does it?

When was the last time we saw anything about Wales? Northern Ireland? North East? When something happens we hear about it.

I have had a look on the BBC website and there's not really much happening anywhere on the main page.

However, here's a link, you can find your own regions. Please do provide links to stories you'd like on the national news.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/england/regions

I agree the reporting is pretty crap was looking out for DCs sad face on there! and given I watched the news this morning and again this evening, there was a lot of repetition.

Where is all this infrastructure investment in the South East? Do you mean London, when the people who live there don't need to use Southern Trains to get around? Or do you mean all the counties which actually do use Southern Rail? Or the possible expansion of Heathrow that the people who live there are so ecstatic about (not)? All the infrastructure development is designed to feed London - and pollute it, and make it hideous to visit because so many people are being rammed in there. West Sussex gets Southern Trains and the fourth worst funded schools in the entire country - schools which are talking of moving to a four day week, so not exactly brilliantly funded. The South East has crumbling, chronically overused infrastructure and more and more people crowding into it, plus increasingly unaffordable, badly built housing stock which is not accompanied by infrastructure improvements to enable sewers, roads, GPs' surgeries, hospitals or schools to keep up with accelerating demand. A lot of people in the South East would love it if there were more job prospects up in the hugely spacious North of England so that more people could move there, instead of killing themselves on awful commuter trains to crowd into a hideously expensive, polluted London.

Crossrail isn't even open yet EastMids so guess how much of that investment we can see?

The imbalance in investment didn't start with Crossrail. (And I see evidence of that investment every time I come down to London, once or twice a week.)

You're being a bit placeist. London is the capital and the the wear and tear compared to less populated areas is atrocious. Density is more of an investment driver than per capita.

London certainly has a denser public transport network than anywhere else in the country. More stations, closer together. How does that make them liable to any more wear and tear when we're talking about investment per capita??

The floods up north made national news for weeks.

I really think the 'London-centric news' thing is over-egged.

Where is all this infrastructure investment in the South East? Do you mean London?

Yes. That's why I wrote "London."

*The floods up north made national news for weeks. I really think the 'London-centric news' thing is over-egged."

On the BBC News website right now, there's a headline about the child abuse inquiry in London football clubs up the top of the page and a link to a similar story about the effects in Scotland shuffled away near the bottom...

So what's that got to do with Southern Rail trains and strikes around the South East?

Has the BBC been showing pictures of sad faced Londoners unable to get to Brighton?