Spotted by TBH in The Guardian:
Rail passengers commuting into London could have services disrupted by freight trains if a no-deal Brexit causes logjams at the Channel tunnel, it has emerged.
Go-Ahead, the company behind the rail operator Southeastern, said it was working with the government to try to ensure commuters were not affected...
Meh
1 hour ago
6 comments:
From here https://www.getlinkgroup.com/uk/eurotunnel-group/operations/traffic-figures/, you can see that freight trains amount tojust under six a day. A glance at Google Maps ( https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Channel+Tunnel+Freight+Folkestone/@51.0930722,1.124314,471m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x47dec7545f356ba1:0x37d4a4f2485c2c28!8m2!3d51.0932002!4d1.11822?hl=en ) shows that there is ample room to store delayed freight trains at Folkestone. Also, this is about as far as you can get from London and not fall into the sea.
Of course it is still possible, even if highly unlikely, that commuter traffic could be disrupted by delayed freight trains, so the headline, in classic Project Fear style, is not technically a lie.
B, exactly
... hence the weasel word "could".
I now have a definition for Project Fear. If an article includes a scare story, uses the words "could", "might" or "may" and gives no indication of the probability of said disaster happening, it's Project Fear. This includes anything to do with Warble Gloaming.
How are they going to know the disruption's caused by Brexit, rather than all the hundreds of other reasons?
B, those are top weasel words.
JM, brilliant. Platform announcement "The 8.53 to Gillingham will be departing Ten minutes late because of Brexit."
Southern Railway are going to use it a lot.
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