A South Devon blog is questioning the veracity of a Herald Express front-page story about cleaning up sick on a bus.
On Tuesday, the Herald Express ran a front-page story claiming a young pregnant woman was charged £5 when she suffered morning sickness on the bus.
The busdriving blog, by David Banks was quickly on the the case.
On the day of the front page story, he wrote: “Stagecoach have no policy of charging anyone for being sick on their buses and a driver is most unlikely to try and implement such a policy on his own. If he did I expect he would be joining the growing crowd round the door to the Jobseekers office. For a fiver? I doubt that.”
He followed that up with: “CCTV cameras spotted her actually getting of the bus in Paignton Bus Station, two stops after the alleged incident. She was seen laughing and talking to other people, hardly the action of someone who had just been through the immensely disturbing ordeal she had described on the front page of the local paper.”
The Herald Express is part of the Daily Mail-owned newspapers in Devon, including the Western Morning News, the editor of which, Alan Qualtrough has come in for criticism from the PRSD.
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It makes me feel sick when I read stories like this.