We seem to recall that a few years ago a tabloid newspaper published the results of a dodgy survey, claiming that the main reasons for non-Londoners not wanting to move to London were (1) house prices, (2) crime and (3) the tube. We were quite annoyed at the time, feeling that the tube deserved the number one spot without a doubt.
Anyway, if any proof were needed that the tabloids love publishing the results of lengthy surveys and passing them off as news, yesterday’s Daily Mirror should have put any doubts to rest.
Amongst the dubious claims from yesterday’s suspect survey is the assertion that the tube is apparently the 54th most annoying thing in the country. 54th? For goodness sake – surely with about 13% of the nation’s population living in London we can manage to give London Underground’s performance a bit more recognition than that?
We can only assume that the survey-takers were disproportionately located outside London. How else can one explain the absence of the chief London annoyance of ‘dawdlers, spreaders, stoppers and switchers’ from the list?
Still, we suppose that any survey that rates ex-smokers as significantly more annoying than ‘diahorrea’ [sic] cannot be taken too seriously. (Make what you will of the Daily Mirror’s inability to spell ‘diarrhoea’ correctly.)
Image taken from Keruna’s Flickr photostream.
