A sorry state of affairs for the Independent

[All Line Rover]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...4-today-programme-election-2017-a7742006.html

The man in charge of Britain's economy got the cost of a high-speed railway wrong by at least £20bn in a radio interview.

Philip Hammond told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that HS2 will cost the taxpayer £32bn, when in fact it is expected to cost more than £52bn.

The Chancellor had been attacking Labour's policy costings, which he claimed "don't add up", when he made the ironic gaffe.

Social media users pointed out the mistake, which happened yesterday, was not immediately reported by most major news outlets... [I'm not surprised!]

...

Ms Abbott gave varying estimates for the cost of the new recruits, ranging from £300,000 to £80m...

ome people said Ms Abbot's poor sums paled in comparison to Mr Hammond's...

I don't recall the print version of the Independent being this bad. Referencing the Daily Telegraph as a source, and even making the unsourced statement that HS2 is "ten times the cost per kilometre of some global counterparts"?

Have a listen to the Twitter excerpt of Philip Hammond's comments. There is nothing wrong with what he said. The article is a non-story.

 

[Groningen]

1 article and the Independent can not be trusted any more. Look what Boris Johnson said about the cost of the HS2.

 

[Busaholic]

The Independent now exists in name only, and should be put out of its misery. For a full story, see the current edition of 'Private Eye'.

 

[edwin_m]

Why if it's Diane Abbott fluffing a line is it all about Diane Abbott, but if it's Philip Hammond it's all about the medium that reported it?

 

[fowler9]

Apparently Boris Johnson has said that £350 million to the NHS is in the Tory manifesto. Who is one to trust?

 

[lightning76]

I think the Independent - and all other mainstream newspapers - might actually "have been that bad". I used to take the print-version Indie, and considered it quite authoritative - until one day I read an article on a subject I actually knew quite a lot about, and found it riddled with errors, blatant untruths, unreliable quotes, etc.

So then I thought, well, are any of the other articles any better informed? I did consider not buying it anymore, but then they stopped printing it which solved the dilemma for me.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Why if it's Diane Abbott fluffing a line is it all about Diane Abbott, but if it's Philip Hammond it's all about the medium that reported it?

Indeed.

And what is it with this forum and THOU SHALT NOT CRITICISE HS2 AS A PHENOMENAL WASTE OF MONEY?

 

[edwin_m]

Indeed.

And what is it with this forum and THOU SHALT NOT CRITICISE HS2 AS A PHENOMENAL WASTE OF MONEY?

Plenty of people do that, but what is irritating is when it is dragged into threads where it's not relevant. Like this one for instance.

 

[BananaRepublic]

The Independent online is purely a load of click-bait to goad both lefties and those on the right, or far right, into reacting. The comments are a mess of childish, nasty and venomous name calling and abuse.

 

[me123]

The Independent online is purely a load of click-bait to goad both lefties and those on the right, or far right, into reacting. The comments are a mess of childish, nasty and venomous name calling and abuse.

Switch the words "left" and "right" and you have the Daily Mail. A paper that has descended much further down this path than the Independent. One poor article from the Independent prompts criticism but the Daily Mail churns out crap like this (and worse) several times an hour.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The Independent now exists in name only, and should be put out of its misery. For a full story, see the current edition of 'Private Eye'.

The "indescribablyboring", as Private Eye has it, is now just reduced to website clickbait. It also seems to have gone rather hard-left at times - not very Independent at all!

 

[Bletchleyite]

Switch the words "left" and "right" and you have the Daily Mail. A paper that has descended much further down this path than the Independent. One poor article from the Independent prompts criticism but the Daily Mail churns out crap like this (and worse) several times an hour.

The Daily Mail was tear-up-and-hang-on-the-nail material[1] to start with.

[1] Anyone in here old enough to have actually done that? I'm not, Andrex (or Tesco's own equivalent) for me

 

[NorthernSpirit]

The Independent online is purely a load of click-bait to goad both lefties and those on the right, into reacting. The comments are a mess of childish, nasty and venomous name calling and abuse.

The Independant (along with the G****ian and the Mirror) are all aimed at the crack-a-jack lefties who can't and won't accept people are different and have different views of one another, but instead put people into different boxes which boils down to black and white thinking.

I'd rather see the three rags being scrapped (well it'll please the Greens for starters as it doesn't mean murdering trees to print the damn things), the websites closed and those who read them to switch to the Morning Star instead which is as far left as you can go - usually read by angry uni students with nothing else to do.

 

[me123]

The Independant (along with the G****ian and the Mirror) are all aimed at the crack-a-jack lefties who can't and won't accept people are different and have different views of one another, but instead put people into different boxes which boils down to black and white thinking

The irony is priceless.

 

[Butts]

The irony is priceless.

"It Is - are you " ?

 

[edwin_m]

The Independant (along with the G****ian and the Mirror) are all aimed at the crack-a-jack lefties who can't and won't accept people are different and have different views of one another, but instead put people into different boxes which boils down to black and white thinking.

Would you therefore regard the Daily Mail as a beacon of free thinking and tolerance for others?

 

[Temple Meads]

The Independant (along with the G****ian and the Mirror) are all aimed at the crack-a-jack lefties who can't and won't accept people are different and have different views of one another, but instead put people into different boxes which boils down to black and white thinking.

I'm not sure if you're on a wind up or are genuinely serious, but either way I needed that laugh!

You might be surprised to learn this but the right wing are just as bad.....

 

[NorthernSpirit]

Would you therefore regard the Daily Mail as a beacon of free thinking and tolerance for others?

The Daily Mail is all over the place, it can't decide whether it'd be left or right leaning.

Temple Meads, I'm genuinely serious by what I put.

 

[Busaholic]

It's salutary to consider that one of the three 'founding fathers' of the Independent was Stephen Glover, now one of the most trenchant of Daily Mail columnists. Hard to believe it's the same person.

 

[All Line Rover]

One poor article from the Independent prompts criticism but the Daily Mail churns out crap like this (and worse) several times an hour.

But we all know that. And the DM doesn't pretend to be a quality paper. The only thing it is good for is finding information (e.g. extracts of interviews) that can't be found elsewhere.