Quote:
Originally Posted by Damien
At least if you're going to lie then do it well.
Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell wouldn't get caught out by so simple an error. They would have intentionally sought out a crowded train. Cynics would say they set themselves up for a photo-op but crucially they wouldn't be able to definitively prove it nor would it really matter.
Talented politicians rarely outright lie. They spin, obfuscate, carefully word statements or deal in hypothetical scenarios but they would rarely put themselves in a situation where something can be completely shown to be false.
The incompetence of it all should alarm people more than the lie.
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As a chap on another forum pointed out, if Corbyn had both brain cells firing he'd have done the stunt on a Southern train at rush hour. That would be pretty much irrefutable, keep the southern rail strikes (which are damaging the government) in the news and really help his cause.
Instead his crew decide to do it on an 11am train to Newcastle with spare seats. Again, if he'd gone for "people have to do this every day, I decided to try it for an hour to highlight the issues" he might have got away with it.
But no, his crew decided to go for the full whopper and make it all up. It reminds me of that woman who claimed she'd been assaulted in Primark while breastfeeding, only for it to be proven she'd made it all up and she was given a suspended prison sentence.
And as for those laying in to Branson for releasing the CCTV footage, all companies are well within their rights to defend their reputation against what could be argued to be defamation/libel or similar. I think Corbyn's team thought that Virgin Trains and Branson simply wouldn't bother defending themselves, only for them to get a very nasty shock.