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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

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

179 replies

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 13/12/2016 13:16

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?

OP posts:

MuppetsChristmasCarol · 13/12/2016 20:51

The floods up north comment. Ffs. That was national news regardless of where it happened. Whole cities were left without power for three days at the end of November. It was fucking freezing, I can tell you.

Bet it was a southerner that made that comment.

roundaboutthetown · 13/12/2016 20:51

Or sad London parents unable to tuck their children into bed at night?

user1471545174 · 13/12/2016 20:52

Agreed 100% with your long post, roundaboutthetown.

EastMidsMummy · 13/12/2016 20:53

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

It's a response to the suggestion that the news is not London-centric. I even quoted the relevant line from a previous poster. Do try to keep up.

SixthSenseless · 13/12/2016 20:59

Londoncentric media bias is part of the reason why I stopped watching the news at all. It's all bloody bollocks. Anywhere north of Leeds apparently doesn't count

Damn all that tedious coverage of the flood in the village of Glenridding last year, and at different times in Cockermouth and Carlisle.
and the road down the side of Thirlmere. Why on earth did we need to hear about that, for example? SO local.

The area that Southern Rail covers includes Kent, Sussex, Surrey (I think) and greater London. It is the longest running dispute since the railways are privatised. People have been losing jobs for months and months, and having to stop oncology treatment at specialist hospitals for months because of the service. MPs have been calling on government for months to take the franchise of Southern. If you are not local, be grateful, but pay attention because if it does happen to your local network you need to be prepared for the fact that the government will allow it to drag on.

And if you have 12 carriage mainline trains on your network, you may like to use this example to decide whether you want that operated on a driver-only basis.

roundaboutthetown · 13/12/2016 21:02

With millions of people squashed in together and millions more commuting in each day, London is always going to generate a lot of news, since it is largely people who create the news through their actions, or the news is about the effects of natural phenomena on people. The vast majority of what goes on in London is not reported on, but quite a lot is because so many people are forced into London from increasing distances away for work, if nothing else, so London news is genuinely relevant to millions of people living outside of London but still having to go there. Like it or not, many people will never visit the East Midlands in their entire lives, but most people are forced into London for one thing or another at some point in their lives.

missfliss · 13/12/2016 21:04

so the crime of living in the South east means it doesn't matter...?
There is no way I would say the same if the situation were elsewhere.

Not that some people will give a shit but I have been dumped at rail stations with no means of onward travel, paid for taxis and hotels because I have been unable to get home from work. I work 30 miles from Brighton in a south coast town.

People going to London and back face dangerous overcrowding on platforms and trains. It's hideous.

This isn't just a thing for this week, it's months and months and months, day in, day out.

It's disheartening that the divisive comments have a home here.

EastMidsMummy · 13/12/2016 21:07

Yes, London is our biggest region and will always generate more news and demand more investment. Should it it get TWENTY TIMES the investment than other regions??

SixthSenseless · 13/12/2016 21:07

Muppets: yes, of course the floods were quite rightly national news, it was a disaster.

But this Southern rail thing isn't just a one day inconvenience and a few soft Londoners whining about it. This is months of people leaving the office and not getting home till 10 at night. If not being able to find child care to cover. This is people's job applications routinely put in the bin because they live on a Southern route.

EastMidsMummy · 13/12/2016 21:09

so the crime of living in the South east means it doesn't matter...?

When has anyone said that??

People have said the regional strikes have had more national coverage than may be justified.

Greeneggsnoham · 13/12/2016 21:10

I've just delurked to say that this strike situation is breaking my husband. I've known him for 18years and never seen him in the state he is in now.

We are worried for his job and our house and it is really upsetting reading this thread and seeing this dismissed in some posts as whinging Bob and his DM sad face.

roundaboutthetown · 13/12/2016 21:13

No, it should not receive so much more investment, because investing so much into it just sucks more and more people into the polluted misery pit that is London from further and further afield. It is drowning in its own "success", with only a tiny minority, within or outside the Capital, genuinely benefiting from that success. The whole country would be better off if everything were not so lopsided. However, that has nothing whatsoever to do with Southern Trains, so has no useful place on this thread, it just confuses the issue to have the two points running alongside each other, because it gives the highly offensive impression that London and the South East are one and the same.

SixthSenseless · 13/12/2016 21:15

I do agree with the OP's later post about how the reporting should be given factual background context, political, financial and human, and not as a series of DM sad-face anecdotes.

SixthSenseless · 13/12/2016 21:19

GreenEggs
Your plight is very real and people up and down the country, good lord, especially in areas where work is scarce, need to see what can happen.

missfliss · 13/12/2016 21:22

Sorry for being lazy, but yes roundaboutthetown agree. Pointless derailing.

There is a lot of dismissive and glib comment about this..

grreneggsnoham I'm so sorry. I've just taken on a man in my team. He has a 4 month old baby and a commute to London - leaved at 5:45 to catch a 6 am service, was home at 8 if lucky. He was wrecked and missed his child, he still has a southern commute but a lot less.

Tanith · 13/12/2016 21:23

Probably the reason why they've gone for the personal "dumbing down" angle is because the real story is a political one and won't take much for the usual suspects to scream "Biased BBC!".

DailyFail1 · 13/12/2016 21:25

The dispute had knock on effects on every rail route to London today. Tubes were horrible. Routes that had nothing today with Southern were horrible.

JassyRadlett · 13/12/2016 21:37

it just sucks more and more people into the polluted misery pit that is London from further and further afield

Nice unbiased assessment of the situation.

GiddyOnZackHunt · 13/12/2016 21:39

green it's the constant disruption, unpredictability, long journeys and over crowding over such a long time that's breaking people. I think the stories are an attempt to find new angles precisely because it's been going on so long. On days like today, days when they reduced normal to 60% of the trains, days like the 1st of January when they'll put the prices up, there's "NEWS!!" but a few days of inconvenience isn't what's going on. Unfortunately the 60 seconds of whinging Bob don't convey the whole story and don't give the scale of it.

roundaboutthetown · 13/12/2016 21:40

It's what I think London is becoming. It used to be more fun to visit. Now it feels too dirty and too crowded.

JassyRadlett · 13/12/2016 22:33

Fair enough. But you know that a lot of people who live and work here really like it, yeah?

roundaboutthetown · 13/12/2016 22:52

That still makes you a minority of the country, though.

Seriously, though, I do like London - just not in rush hour, not in school holidays and not in the summer tourist season.

roundaboutthetown · 13/12/2016 22:53

Oh, and not for Christmas shopping.

JassyRadlett · 13/12/2016 22:57

That still makes you a minority of the country, though.

True, but you can say that about any part of the country. Once we start playing 'I wouldn't live there if you paid me' top trumps there'd be nothing left that was acceptable to talk about.

I guess I'm one of those who was 'sucked in', albeit from the other side of the world. Certainly very different to where I grew up (nearest neighbours half an hour's drive away), but the advantages outweigh the disadvantages for me.

roundaboutthetown · 13/12/2016 23:03

Well, the advantages outweighed the disadvantages for me when I lived in central London without children. I don't think they would with children, and I don't think commuting in from right outside London makes London seem fun at all.

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