THE main manoeuvre for journalists when a politician or a big decision-maker complains that you have been too hard or too negative on them, is to wipe imaginary dust of your shoulders, smile and say: Well if you aren’t ruffling a few feathers, then you’re not doing your job properly. Something like that.

Maybe its time for such a motion for the New Journal’s Tom Foot, our chief reporter who has been identified by the HS2 press and communications team as being the ‘most unfavourable journalist’ in writing about the cash-sucking high speed rail project. Their media coverage stats apparently show that in the first quarter of 2014 he was ranked as a writer who had contributed ’33 negative pieces’ to the debate. It’s not quite clear who did the mad math(s) here, but 33 negative pieces in 12 weeks on a weekly newspaper, by anyone’s standards, is an electric, almost impossible pace. Nearly three a week, shurely shome mishtake.

But, still if you aren’t ruffling a few feathers…