The Evening Standard has run an extraordinary campaign of persecution against sacked Northern line driver Robert Rankin. They even sent reporters to his house, and when they failed to heed his requests to leave and he allegedly tried to persuade them with a bucket of water, they reckoned that deserved the front page headline. (In case you are tempted to pass harsh judgement on Robert, think how you would feel if the Standard doorstepped you and your family when you had just lost your livelihood.)
The strange thing is that many tabloid newspapers campaigned for the release of Tony Martin, the farmer who shot dead an intruder at his house. Maybe, in these newspapers’ view, there should be one law for landowners, another for train drivers.
This loathsome incident reminds us of their similar campaign against Chris Barrett. Front page headlines about someone they deemed to be a squash-playing skiver, but how much prominence did they give to the Employment Tribunal’s decision that LUL had dismissed him unfairly? Er, not as much.
