Thread for anyone to explain why Labour would do better under Owen Smith's leadership.

[Denzil_DC]

11. And as an example of how unbelievably stupid the whole media thing's got,

I caught the headlines on BBC Radio 4's evening news programme just now. Apparently there's a scandal because somebody had filmed Corbyn walking past empty seats on that train on the way to the leadership hustings where he ended up sitting on the floor.

So I headed online, where even Twitter apparently has more investigative capacity and sense of news values than the BBC does.

Richard Branson, who obviously has no vested interest in reports of chronic train overcrowding, released some CCTV footage from the train supposedly proving there were empty seats that Corbyn walked past.

Here's Corbyn walking past "empty seats"



Note the red cards, which indicate they're reserved.

And in the end, here's the damning shot of Corbyn sitting - in a seat, shockhorrorhowdarehe!!1! - in Coach H,



where, as may happen when the rest of a train's dangerously overcrowded, a ticket inspector had shuffled people around so that groups could sit together, and directed those without First Class tickets to find more comfortable accommodation, freeing up a seat for Corbyn in Coach H.

And here's an eyewitness report - it seems the media has the resources to hunt out intemperate tweets from people, but not to find anything that blows their latest silly season story out of the water.



Now, it took up five minutes of my life to figure all that out. And the BBC just ran another two-minute report on it. Is it any wonder people are tuning out?

And to cap it all, gratifyingly, Branson appears to have fallen foul of the Streisand Effect:

Passengers dispute Virgin Trains' claims about Jeremy Corbyn 'sitting on floor' video

The row over whether Jeremy Corbyn had to sit on the floor of a Virgin train has taken a new twist after passengers on the service disputed the company’s version of events.

Earlier this month Mr Corbyn released a video of himself sitting on the floor of a Virgin East Coast train arguing that “this is a problem that many passengers face every day”.

The train company, however, has released CCTV stills showing Mr Corbyn finding a seat on the train, saying that it “clearly wasn’t the case” he could not find somewhere to sit. Though Mr Corbyn did not claim that there were no seats on the train, he said it was “ram-packed”.

Other people on the train have however come forward to say it was in fact very busy, at least at the start of the journey.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/passengers-dispute-virgin-trains-version-of-jeremy-corbyn-sitting-on-floor-video-a7205631.html