"Graeme" wrote:

"Mizter T" wrote:

"Graeme" wrote:

MIG wrote:

On good form today with reports of South Eastern services suspended
between Shepherds Bush and Milton Keynes.

Their willingness to repeat nonsense for bulletin after bulletin is
often less obviously workable out than that one, like the time that
they kept announcing that services on the "Lewisham line" were being
diverted, when they meant that services between Dartford and Lewisham
via Bexleyheath were being diverted via Sidcup (rather important for
punters to know that they were NOT going via Bexleyheath, but WERE
going via Lewisham).

They do this sort of thing over and over. The newsreaders just keep
on dumbly reading it out every half hour. You'd think that the London
travel newsroom would have some vague idea about transport in London.

Blame it on the idiots who put out the press releases.


Such things are not normally communicated by press release - certainly
not
'live' travel updates.

I was using the term 'press release' in it's widest sense, ie information
released to the press/media.

Understood.


However one only needs to look at some of the examples of future
engineering works information on TOC posters and websites and the NRE
site
to see what a mangled mess can be made of communicating such
information -
and likewise, the NRE current disruptions page can read rather
cryptically
too (same can apply to some extent to the 'live' info coming from the
TOCs).


And that's what the broadcasters generally have to work from.

Indeed - when it's unclear as to whether the person who wrote the source
material understood what they were on about, it's hardly surprising that
follow-up confusion can arise. (Some of the stuff I've read is both
genuinely pathetic and also infuriating.)