South Cumbrian viewers of BBC North West Tonight must be getting heartily sick of being ignored. For a week-and-a-bit now we have had nothing north of Preston on the flagship BBC Regional Programme for North West England, nothing for the northern two- thirds of the geographical North West of England. The Isle of Man has had an item of news- coverage almost daily (which it should, by the way, because of its isolated location) and it has a population of 85,000 tops. South Cumbrians, who receive North West Tonight and number 200,000 have had no coverage of their county.
I see the shops have all opened in Manchester and Liverpool after the Coronavirus shutdown, excellent coverage of that. Good coverage of the flooding at Milnrow, not far from Rochdale and social- distancing/ wearing masks on trains going from Manchester and flights resuming from Liverpool. But flash-flooding caused a serious accident on the M6 near Kendal this afternoon- leading to serious congestion on the M6: No coverage of that. A man has now been charged with murder after a man died in Barrow and this was not reported on at all on BBC North West Tonight (this was on BBC Look North (NE/ Cumbria) as Look North goes out of its way to report on significant happenings in south Cumbria for the benefit of their North Cumbrian viewers).
And because, unlike BBC Look North, BBC North West really dont report anything beyond their transmission areas even just a few miles hundreds of North West Gypsies recently travelled to Appleby Fair- only to find out that they had made a wasted journey. Alas BBC North West Tonight never even mentioned Appleby Fair, the largest annual gathering for Gypsies in Europe and the all- important fact that Appleby Fair this year was cancelled due to the Coronavirus Pandemic. Of course, BBC North West don’t do any reports from Appleby, in Cumbria’s Eden Valley because it is 15 miles beyond their “Patch”. So hundreds of North West Gypsies- one of the poorest and vulnerable people- groups in the Region- made a wasted journey by horseback. That is what I would call a dereliction of Public duty!
