Que?‘Northern Ireland and Scotland should be linked by a tunnel, which could allow the traveller to go all the way from Cork to South Korea by train, according to a leading authority on public finance.’
Oh. Okay.‘Northern Ireland and Scotland should be linked by a tunnel, which would allow the traveller to go all the way from Cork to South Korea by train, according to a leading authority on public finance.’
According to the press release: ‘David Clement, a past chairman of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) in Northern Ireland, said such a tunnel would be the next logical (wha? Ed.) step following the reopening of St Pancras Station in London, bringing faster travel from Britain to the continent.’
It is clearly the next logical step following the reopening of St Pancras. How much for ‘this exciting scheme’?
According to the press release ‘a figure of £2bn or £3bn might be needed for a fixed link between the countries’.
Ah heck, done! After all we’ve got just the 29 daily sailings between Northern Ireland and Scotland. And a limitless budget that puts Robbo into the same bracket as Croesus and Solomon.
Outside of Bobballs, surely no one would touch this balls. Surely anything calling itself the premier politics site in Britain would construct such a tunnel simply to avoid damaging its credibility by running the story, right? Sadly… no.
Forget the money, several logistical issues present themselves. For example, going to S Korean requires passing through N Korea. Yip, staff at Bobballs won’t shy away from tackling the obvious. It occurred to the Koreans.
So setting aside the (absence of) capital required, political will, logistical necessity, public interest, economic viability, and logic and sanity for the decision at this end of the line, what about the Korean end?
A freight line was expected to come online in December. Well, it seems still to be in the discussion stage. Incidentally, they’re still discussing how to end that dust up they had a while ago. So not expecting enormous progress to be honest.
Understand that good PR is about making an impact. But not just any kind of impact. If CIPFA are going to put someone up demanding tunnels under a well-serviced sea route to open up the economic treasure trove that is Korea (wha? Ed.) and without mentioning the environmental case, then frankly they deserve John McGuinness (see below).
Staff at Bobballs are in discussions to book McGuinness on day release scheme from DETE. Accountancy will pay for mistaking what's ludicrous as edgey and interesting… Dorks.
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2 comments:
LOL excellent Bob ... having to pass through the closed state of North Korea.
A recent NUJ report found that standards weren’t what they could be in regional press. On standards, it states: ‘One of the biggest dangers lies in the ease of copying and pasting text from websites and emails. Quite apart from questions of copyright, journalists under time pressure may be tempted to simply lump text across without proper consideration of its quality or reliability.’
Surely not. Can this explain how The Herald managed to publish a fantasy-land CIPFA press release without any actual reporting?
‘Reprieved, waiting for trains on 10:17am today’ (from The Herald’s reader comment section) called for more ‘analytical journalists, not headline jockeys’. I mean, really.
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