sensational

The mass media tends too often towards the sensational. Walk through London on a weekday afternoon and you'll see posters for the Evening Standard that scream 'Incredible!', 'Exclusive' and 'Sensational' at the passing commuters when the stories are about the latest botox injection that a random lower league celeb may or may not have had. Percentages offer a rich seam of opportunity. 'Two Hundred Percent Increase' in accidents at a black-spot where last year there was one and this year there were three. The maths is good, the headlines are not.

And so to this morning and I am told by Channel 10's morning news that a new 'World Record' has been set for train travel between London and Paris. A world record? Just how many people and orgasnisations - globally - can have a pop at this record? It's hardly a new marathon world record. And how was this magnificent feat achieved? It seems a train in Britain can, at last, achieve the sort of speed French trains could in the 1950s. World record indeed...I am glad to report that the BBC merely said it was a new record. Far better, as you'd expect from the beeb.

Then I found this appalling sentence on another BBC report about a suspected bomb plot in Germany. I'm not sure I know exactly what happened...

Last summer, two suitcase bombs were planted on commuter trains in several German towns but they failed to explode.