Oxford Circus tube station incident (November 24, 2017) | BBC coverage: exercise in fake news?

[Tintin]

Those of us who know London well will be familiar with the station of course and to those who do not know London at all, it is situated on Oxford Street, which is arguably the busiest street for commerce, retail and the like, in the city.

The reason for posting this at all, and it may not be of any great interest, and that I am absolutely prepared to accept, is that there were some very peculiar anomalies with the presentation of this incident by the BBC.

Here's a brief chronology from me as I witnessed the story unravel, in real time, yesterday late afternoon/early evening UK time.

For an hour and a half before this story broke the 'Breaking' news was the appalling Egyptian mosque atrocity, there was some coverage of Theresa May at the EU Summit around the Brexit talks and the usual sport and weather bulletins. I was watching this in a pub and there was no sound on, just the visual.

At 17:00 hours, the 5 o'clock regular on the hour slot, the new 'Breaking' news was this tube incident. Flashed up on the screen at around 17:02 was a tweet from the British Transport Police (BTP) Twitter account saying 'We continue to investigate...'. On the bottom left of this tweet, as is usually the case, there was a time stamp. It read 08:56AM 24 Nov 2017.

Okay, so far so weird. You've spotted the anomaly here, right?

A little later on into the bulletin, around a couple of minutes or so later, another tweet is flashed up on screen that said something along the lines of 'Officers are in attendance..etc...' and this time the time stamp read 09:06AM.

At around 17:30 another tweet is flashed up on screen saying: 'At 16:37 officers responded to reports of shots being fired...', this time the time stamp read 09:16AM.

What is going on here? What have they being doing for the last 8 hours if we are to believe this?

One of the bar staff who was next to me checked the BTP site on her smartphone and could find no tweets from that early hour (possibly they had been deleted?) but later tweets where the times now being shown, and in a different way on the television screen - not the tweet caption themselves but the narrative only - and a change to the real time being, for example, 4.15PM, and shown like that, on screen.

That's mighty fishy.

One couldn't help but wonder how tweets purportedly posted in the morning, as would be evidenced or absolutely suggested, from what we were shown, would anticipate events that would be 'Breaking' some 8 hours later.

How real is this event, on one of the busiest shopping days of the year, on one of the busiest streets in a metropolis like London? It also didn't immediately appear that there had been any social media activity posted by commuters, at all prior to 17:00 hours. Again, this evidenced by the young lady bar person checking for this on her phone.

Trust me, I used to do the commute daily and if there was a station closure, as was the case here and an 'incident' there'd be practically immediate social media flow. And, from around 08:50 or so, based on the supposed earlier tweets.

My mind admittedly went immediately to: is this an exercise, not a real event, designed to generate fear and in so doing set the stage for an introduction to scanners on the tube, which mirrors the oh so convenient 'benefit' (sic) from the Las Vegas horror, that may suit those with a commercial interest?

Who knows, but the very odd presentation of this event, whatever it really was, and its timing threw up only niggling questions.

Here's this morning's Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/nov/24/oxford-circus-police-attend-tube-incident

Sorry I wasn't in a position to take screen-shots of what I have described above but hopefully clearly enough for you to get a picture.

[Hervé]

... a distraction from this other, real one:

The terrorists who slaughtered 305 people at a mosque in Egypt yesterday were carrying an ISIS flag and wearing masks, it has been revealed. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5116227/Arena-death-Islamist-terrorists-slaughtered-300.html)

[Tintin]

You're not wrong. And a reminder to anyone not familiar with the roots of ISIS (Egyptian mother goddess blatant reference not withstanding) as a 'western' (may include Saudi) funded effective PMC - mercenary outfit - with no religious affiliation.

Who sponsored this attack? SA/Israel in an attempt to drag Egypt into a wider territorial war along with the other states already engaged in conflict?

However you look at it, this mosque attack was an appalling and terrible act, and very real.

[Tintin]

An interesting follow up story from the Guardian this morning which provides a different angle on this unusually presented news item.

It seemed fishy at the time; it may have become fishier still, not the least of which is the re-assertion in the article that something was going on at 4.30pm inconsistent with the tweet time-stamps shown on the BBC at the time.

(If I was in possession of an animated fish avatar I'd be inclined to insert it here now.)

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https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/apr/09/olly-murs-suggests-oxford-circus-terror-scare-could-have-been-a-cover-up


Olly Murs suggests Oxford Circus terror scare could have been a 'cover-up'

The musician claimed to have heard ‘gunshots’ in Selfridges when police evacuated the central London street in November 2017

Despite being ridiculed for his suggestion that shots were fired inside the London branch of Selfridges last November, pop star Olly Murs has now suggested there was more to the Oxford Circus terror scare than met the eye.

“I ran into an office after being told by the staff of Selfridges that someone was there with a gun,” he told the Sun. “Whether they were shooting into the air or whatever, something happened that day – whether it was covered up, I don’t know.”

Murs was purchasing a present on 24 November 2017 when shoppers began fleeing the area, leading to the deployment of armed police and a section of London’s West End being evacuated. The musician posted several tweets saying that he and other shoppers were hiding in the store’s back office.

Police later said that an altercation between two men inside Oxford Circus tube station just after 4.30pm appeared to have triggered the panic – along with a heightened atmosphere following attacks in London and Manchester. The Met police said there was “no evidence of shots fired or casualties”.

Murs, however, claims that a Selfridges staff member and other customers told him that someone had a gun (Selfridges subsequently tweeted that no incident had taken place). Murs said he continued to receive daily ridicule over his claims. “Well, next time you’re in Selfridges and that happens to you, I’ll message you and say, ‘How was that? How do you feel now? You’re not Mr Brave now, are you?’” said Murs.

“If I’d done it and someone had been shooting, you’d all be sitting here now going, ‘You know what, Olly, you’ve done well.’”

[Foxie Loxie]

Does this sound familiar to the LV happening, or what?! :confused: