[HN Gopher] UK rail minister got engineer sacked for raising saf...
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UK rail minister got engineer sacked for raising safety concerns
Author : scrlk
Score : 458 points
Date : 2024-08-29 09:19 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.politico.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.politico.eu)
| alexchamberlain wrote:
| As long as it's done in the right way, I think a supplier raising
| safety concerns should be a reason to do _more_ business with
| them, not less.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Sounds like it was done via the media, not the correct internal
| channels.
| lawn wrote:
| That's usually the only option when nobody listens.
| dathinab wrote:
| but do "correct internal channels" exist, are accessible by
| the people people in raising concerns (especially potentially
| anonymously) and are not ignored?
|
| because most times they aren't really usable if they even
| exist
|
| and raising concerns on such channels can often get you in as
| much trouble as doing so publicly -- but without you concerns
| being pretty much guaranteed ignored
| Pingk wrote:
| Maybe, but it was already public knowledge:
|
| > In September 2023 the government regulator, the Office of
| Rail and Road (ORR), had issued an improvement notice to
| Network Rail about overcrowding at the station, warning: "You
| have failed to implement, so far as reasonably practicable,
| effective measures to prevent risks to health and safety of
| passengers (and other persons at the station) during
| passenger surges and overcrowding events at London Euston
| Station."
|
| It's concerning to me that Hendy was the chair of Network
| Rail from 2015 before becoming Transport Minister, and here
| he is sacking someone after a comment about his former
| workplace. Should definitely be an investigation into his
| motives/incentives IMO
| londons_explore wrote:
| "public" via a set of documents hidden deep on an official
| webpage is very different to "public" as a news headline.
| rcxdude wrote:
| But it is presumably the "Correct internal channels"?
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Here's the news headline from the time for you:
|
| https://news.sky.com/story/network-rail-failing-to-stop-
| unac...
| pastage wrote:
| I wonder if there are still overcrowding at that station,
| or if it really was fixed in 2023.
|
| A bit of a Streisand effect going on here.
| luke-stanley wrote:
| Well, when I was in Euston rail station a few weeks ago,
| it was very overcrowded. It seemed worse in the day than
| the night. Seems like the minister is missing the
| necessity of acting with integrity and transparency, a
| lesson they frequently need reminding of. Surely there
| must be better person the PM could find for the job, that
| don't feel a need write harassing letters, bullying train
| companies into firing staff?
| blcknight wrote:
| There's rarely a "right" way to whistleblow. Most of the
| official channels in any bureaucracy exist to both sound nice
| and simultaneously sweep everything under the rug
| acdha wrote:
| Yes: it takes an extraordinary amount of cultural back-
| pressure to counter out the tendency to protect the
| organizational hierarchy. This can be slightly better in the
| public sector when laws require disclosure but it's usually
| still too easy to obscure matters or, especially, rely on
| complex organizational structures and outsourcing to diffuse
| responsibility to the point that it's hard to hold any one
| person accountable.
| crimsoneer wrote:
| It's notable here that he didn't engage as a representative of
| the company, but more as an "engineering writer", probably
| after the newspaper reached out for comment.
|
| But yes, not exactly a fan of people this senior sticking their
| nose in misconduct matters, but also, if you're employed by a
| company, you probably shouldn't badmouth their clients in the
| national papers and not be aware that's risky. It's not exactly
| whistleblowing.
| etiennebausson wrote:
| Raising safety issues is part of a senior engineer's duties
| (or any engineer, really).
|
| Since railways through Europe are a state monopoly, it's not
| like there are tons of people in the industry that do not
| work for said 'client'. Who is supposed to pull the alarm in
| this case? No One? That's how you end up with Boeing-adjacent
| engineering.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > railways through Europe are a state monopoly
|
| The situation is much more stupid than that: there's a set
| of "private" companies, some of which are substantially
| owned by states and some are not, all of which are quasi-
| monopolies.
| londons_explore wrote:
| This guy will get 1 years salary as compensation after winning an
| unfair dismissal case, and then he will never work in rail again.
| He'll have to pay much of those winnings back to his legal team.
|
| Over his life, he will almost certainly earn less.
|
| Shouldn't have spoken out. Had he kept quiet, a crush would have
| happened, a few people would have been pushed off a platform and
| died under a train, and it would be a "tragedy" - but he'd get to
| keep his livelihood.
| seanthemon wrote:
| Ironically: The Trolly Problem [0] except the singular person
| is you.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I bet even if your predictions are right, he'll still live a
| happier life knowing he has saved some lives.
| scrlk wrote:
| See Roger Boisjoly, an engineer at Morton Thiokol who tried to
| blow the whistle on design flaws in the Space Shuttle's solid
| rocket boosters before the Challenger disaster:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Boisjoly
|
| > Boisjoly sent a memo describing the problem to his managers,
| but was apparently ignored.[8] Following several further memos,
| a task force was convened to investigate the matter, but after
| a month Boisjoly realized that the task force had no power, no
| resources, and no management support. In late 1985, Boisjoly
| advised his managers that if the problem was not fixed, there
| was a distinct chance that a shuttle mission would end in
| disaster. No action was taken.
|
| > After President Ronald Reagan ordered a presidential
| commission to review the disaster, Boisjoly was one of the
| witnesses called. He gave accounts of how and why he felt the
| O-rings had failed, and argued that the caucus called by Morton
| Thiokol managers, which resulted in a recommendation to launch,
| was an "unethical decision-making forum resulting from intense
| customer intimidation."
|
| > According to Boisjoly, Thiokol unassigned him from space
| work, and he was ostracized by his colleagues and managers.
| vegardx wrote:
| I get the point you're trying to make here, and the sarcastic
| undertone, but I'd have issues living with myself if people
| died because of something that I was able to identify and that
| was preventable, and I did nothing.
|
| The whole case strikes me as odd. Not only did the higher ups
| know about the problem, they also left a paper trail about
| keeping a lid on it and getting rid of the guy. This opens them
| up to a lot of scenarios, like:
|
| - As demonstrated by this case, the information came out
| because of the wrongful termination
|
| - If an accident had happened there's a fairly high chance that
| the investigators would uncover it, either because the engineer
| in question came forward or because they think they should have
| known about this, and cracks appear when they start asking
| questions.
|
| An unspoken rule in a lot of fields is that you make sure that
| this kind of information never reaches the people that could be
| held liable for it. The people that are likely to be held
| responsible at least have to make it appear that they're not
| trying to suppress information like this. You quickly lose that
| ability if you actively try to get rid of people that tries to
| raise an issue. So they surround themselves with middle
| management that knows to not bring things up to them, without
| being explicitly told so.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| The point is that there are many people sleeping fine _or
| not_ , that kept their livelihood by not whistleblowing.
| solely due to the misaligned incentives and lack of
| accountability
| HPsquared wrote:
| Society depends on these kinds of people.
| surfingdino wrote:
| He'll find a job as a security consultant abroad. He'll be
| fine.
| fragmede wrote:
| Being forced from your home and into moving abroad and into a
| new career might work out for him, but it's still seems like
| a lot of unnecessary turmoil for him and and his
| familybecause he chose to do the right thing.
| hwhwhwhhwhwh wrote:
| You will at max live another 100 years. Where will he take all
| these extra savings to?
| ninininino wrote:
| This is going to surprise you, but having more money enables
| you to spend more of your finite lifespan working on your own
| initiatives/goals in life (whether they are financially
| rewarding or not) without needing to persuade someone
| wealthier than you that they want what you want and are
| willing to pay to do it.
| hwhwhwhhwhwh wrote:
| I believe there is a non zero probability that
| you(awareness) are eternal and what you do in this life has
| consequences in subsequent lives.
|
| It's okay for you to disagree. That's just my belief
| system.
| ninininino wrote:
| Ah well I guess I don't understand the relevance of that.
| Even if you for example have infinite time, doesn't it
| still make sense a person might be motivated to attain
| wealth in order to give themselves more freedom in how
| they spend their life w/o needing to consider affording
| the survival needs?
| hwhwhwhhwhwh wrote:
| Sorry. I was talking about this example where the person
| choose to risk a financial loss in favor of performing a
| more virtuous act for the society. He prefered to live a
| life with integrity over money.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| He's just published a book that looks quite interesting:
| https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Railways-Will-Future-Rediscover...
| 2-3-7-43-1807 wrote:
| this is the right attitude - exactly.
| blitzar wrote:
| The maximum unfair dismissal compensatory award (in the UK) is
| PS105,707. Imagine if the maximum you had to pay if you stole
| from or defrauded your employer was PS100k ...
|
| The legislation tends to protect the paper entity 'the
| corporation' rather than the living breathing human.
| RyanHamilton wrote:
| Wow, I didn't believe you so googled and I'm stunned. There
| is a limit for unfair dismissal. Thanks.
| londons_explore wrote:
| You can still sue the company for other reasons - for example
| if they stole from you the employee.
| datavirtue wrote:
| The system is what it does. And that's the system.
| glitchc wrote:
| Yeah, I mean, why even become an engineer? Why work in safety?
| Let's rubber-stamp everything the manager says it's good. It
| must be good, they said it! Think about your words the next
| time you or a relative or a friend is hurt or dies in a
| preventable accident. Thank god you're not an engineer.
| gsky wrote:
| No good deed goes unpunished sadly.
|
| what a f..d up world we live in
| jonp888 wrote:
| His "speaking out" achieved nothing getting him on TV.
|
| He's no whistleblower with inside information. His engineering
| role is to design track geometry and nothing to do with
| stations or passengers so he has no professional authority to
| speak on the subject beyond that of an ordinary rail passenger.
|
| The problems at Euston are well known and obvious to anyone who
| uses the station.
|
| In fact, the UK rail safety regulator issued an improvement
| notice with legal force requiring the operator to take steps to
| change the situation: https://www.orr.gov.uk/search-news/rail-
| regulator-requires-c...
| akira2501 wrote:
| > He'll have to pay much of those winnings back to his legal
| team.
|
| I'm not sure about the UK, but in the USA, most lawyers would
| take this case speculatively and they would charge 30% of the
| winnings. It's an amount calibrated to just barely be
| acceptable but it typically isn't as bad as you suggest.
| blcknight wrote:
| > In 2013, Peter Hendy, who was then the Commissioner of
| Transport for London, was accused of engaging in a nine-month
| extramarital affair with Rachael Grundy, a call girl who charged
| PS140 per hour. Grundy alleged that Hendy provided her with
| several Oyster cards loaded with PS10 as gifts
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hendy
| janice1999 wrote:
| His brother's a Baron. Of course this class fails upwards. Only
| the poor plebs will pay the price while those in power award
| each other CBEs and ignore warnings from the working class
| about impending disaster. See also the post office injustice
| and the Grenfell Tower fire.
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| Check out "The Fool" (2014):
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3560686/
| janice1999 wrote:
| Thanks, I'll check it out. One of my friends and his
| brothers all left Russia (before the recent war) because of
| the corruption. The most depressing part of his stories is
| how apathetic most people are and how there is so little
| hope for change there.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Lol, there's even more classy things about him on there:
|
| > During 2014, Hendy reportedly spent over PS1,200 in taxpayer-
| provided money on lunches and dinners, including on one
| occasion more than PS90 in alcohol.
|
| And that despite a 650k salary - as if he couldn't afford to
| get wasted on his own. What a disgrace.
| morsch wrote:
| Otoh regular public sector employees (from what I hear) don't
| even get free coffee at the office.
| blitzar wrote:
| PS90 won't get you wasted in a restaurant in London.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| And us plebs are still massively subsiding the food and drink
| of UK MPs and Lords. As well as paying their rent and loads
| of other expenses, on top of a pretty decent salary. Why
| should they get drunk at tax payers expense? Funny how
| austerity always affects the poorest, but doesn't touch the
| politicians.
| rwmj wrote:
| The author name that added this section is interesting too. Way
| to get your own back ...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peter_Hendy&diff=...
| smcl wrote:
| Hope that doesn't come back to bite him, I'm sure if he
| mentioned it in one of his streams any one of us in the
| community would've happily updated the page.
| dobladov wrote:
| People whose job is managing and not understanding issues does
| not want to deal with issues, it's in their interest to always
| give the impression of everything working smoothly, that's why
| engineering driven companies fail the moment that managerial
| people takes over.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| Employees: _- It 's 3.6 Rontgen, but that's as high as the
| meter..._
|
| Management: _- 3.6 Rontgen, not great not terrible._
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Was that from HBO's _Chernobyl_?
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| Yes.
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| A more fitting quote would be "They gave them the propaganda
| number".
| cedws wrote:
| It's a very HN thing to say, but god, the world would be so
| much better if we kicked these parasites out and engineers ran
| the show.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| Good engineers don't have the neccesariy personality traits
| to climb over corpses of others to get into upper management.
| So those who end up in upper management are always the worst
| sociopaths who only know how to play the politics game as
| their main goal is just climbing the ladder, not developing
| good products/services. Exceptions do exist (Jensen Huang,
| Lisa Su, etc) but that's why they are the exceptions.
| benterix wrote:
| That's a vast overgeneralization. Sometimes instead of
| being sociopath the opposite is needed: the so-called
| emotional intelligence and knowing where the wind blows
| from so that you can act accordingly. I good example is
| Mira Murati whom I definitely wouldn't call a sociopath and
| instead is very flexible in her position, something that
| would be quite painful for many engineers (at least the
| ones I know).
| ashkankiani wrote:
| I get nervous reading when people write exceptions and name
| "good" CEOs or "good" celebrities. Lots of skeletons come
| out later. I don't like to put people on a pedestal,
| especially those we don't know intimately well.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > I get nervous reading when people write exceptions and
| name "good" CEOs or "good" celebrities
|
| Good CEOs are good at being CEOs. That doesn't mean that
| they're good people.
|
| Steve Jobs was pretty famously an a-hole, and did a
| number of morally questionable things.
|
| But he also took Apple from the verge of bankrupcy to one
| of the most valuable companies in the world.
|
| OJ Simpson was a fantastic football player. And he
| murdered (my opinion) Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron
| Goldman.
|
| It's OK to acknowledge that some people are good at one
| thing and are also terrible in other ways.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Funnily enough that's also often the issue with engineers
| - good at technical things but not so good elsewhere.
| There's a reason we all have different jobs.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Better to acknowledge that you are speaking in
| generalities and exceptions exist, but not to name those
| exceptions.
| dagw wrote:
| Lots of people with engineering degrees and backgrounds hold
| very senior positions at large companies and happily make
| short term, profit driven, decisions every day. Unless you
| want to play a game of "no TRUE engineer" I don't think it
| would make a huge difference.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| The UK is full of stuff, built by Victorian engineers.
| Quite a lot of it is still working. Some of it is quite
| beautiful. I doubt anything built by private equity backed
| companies will still be working in 100 years.
| JTbane wrote:
| I don't know about your tastes, but personally (as an
| individual contributor) the idea of classic manager work
| (dealing with vacations, perf reviews, hiring, firing, etc)
| are extremely unappealing to me.
| khafra wrote:
| Executives and managers do actually contribute useful things to
| large-enough firms. But the failure mode of engineer-driven
| companies is Juicero; the failure mode of MBA-driven firms is
| killing people for profit (lying in order to sell poison to
| third-world mothers, sending death squads after labor
| organizers, lowering passenger airliner quality until they
| start falling out of the sky, etc.).
| maeil wrote:
| > But the failure mode of engineer-driven companies is
| Juicero; the failure mode of MBA-driven firms is killing
| people for profit.
|
| This is one to hang on the wall as an office poster!
| phanimahesh wrote:
| Juicero feels like a manager or growth hacker or hype person
| driven thing. I find it hard to imagine juicero being an
| engineering team.
| khafra wrote:
| I'm not a mechanical engineer, so I base my "overly
| engineer-driven" impression of the company almost solely on
| this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ
| blitzar wrote:
| Juicero feels like a failure mode of grindset.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| I wouldn't call Juicero engineering driven. More over-
| engineering driven. Similar to software developers creating
| hyper scalable microservice architectures for even the most
| trivial systems. True engineering is to understand the
| requirements and creating an efficient solution for those,
| not just throwing every possible technology at the project.
| regularfry wrote:
| That's why it's a failure mode.
| mindslight wrote:
| ... and the Juicero type failure is worse from the
| perspective of most investors.
| Kydlaw wrote:
| I personally find this information frightening... we are now in a
| world where management no longer even listens to its engineers or
| technical experts when they warn of serious dangers. Obviously
| everyone thinks of Boeing, and today it's "only" a train station,
| but imagine if the same culture developed in an industrial
| chemical plant or a nuclear power station?
|
| Where do you go? What do you do? Unless you have an Engineer
| Association or an Union to back you up, you are doomed to be
| crushed by your upper management and beyond...
| jl6 wrote:
| Out of interest, what would the right resolution have been to
| reduce the risk of a crush due to overcrowding? Close the station
| entrance when at capacity?
| lupusreal wrote:
| Run more trains so the station never reaches capacity. Or
| expand the station.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| Both solutions would take months/years to implement.
|
| "More trains" mean they need to radically improve
| service/repairs and/or purchase of new trains.
|
| "Expand the station" would mean that they would have to shut
| down all-of or large-parts of it while works take place. I
| remember being impacted of the London Bridge train station
| de-spaghetti-fying the tracks. I moved out of the area I was
| living so eventually I was impacted for only 4-5 months.
|
| I will not touch the matter of costs.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Nobody said all problems have cheap solutions.
| stuaxo wrote:
| London bridge tracks untangled is so much better for
| throughput - I remember so many long waits as a Brighton
| train blocked the whole station crossing the tracks.
|
| One surprising good thing the gov did at that time was
| insist on the rebuild of the station itself, it was
| particularly grim, and just a mess.
|
| I've lived nearby the whole time and the new station is a
| nice space, generally efficient with good throughput for
| the trains.
|
| I'm pessimistic, but really hoping they don't stick with
| plans to build a too small terminus in London for HS1, not
| too optimistic as we have Rachael Reeves as a continuity
| austerity Chancellor - lets see.
| smcl wrote:
| > plans to build a too small terminus in London for HS1
|
| You're talking about _HS2_ and Old Oak Common, right?
| Yeah that 's a peculiar choice of terminus
| stuaxo wrote:
| Not sure there is more capacity for trains there.
| smcl wrote:
| There were plans to expand Euston, then the Tories
| cancelled those plans and sold off the land that was
| acquired to accommodate said plans to make sure it wouldn't
| ever happen in the future (by this point they were already
| collapsing in popularity and clearly going to lose the
| election).
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Or expand the station._
|
| According to [1] nineteen national rail trains will depart
| from Euston in the next hour. And according to [2] Euston has
| 16 platforms.
|
| Can a station platform really only dispatch 1.2 trains per
| hour? Fifty minutes per train? Seems kinda low to me.
|
| I guess they need time to clean the trains, and space for
| trains that arrive well before their scheduled departure
| time. But still, it seems like a lot of platforms for the
| number of trains.
|
| [1] https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/live-
| trains/departures/london... [2]
| https://www.networkrail.co.uk/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/10/Eus...
| smcl wrote:
| Platforms != distinct rail lines. Now, if only there were
| plans to run a new national, let's say _high speed_ , rail
| link from the North of England into Euston which would
| improve this capacity ...
| shaoonb wrote:
| The capacity limit is the number of tracks. There are 4 AC
| and 2 DC tracks on the line out of Euston and they are also
| used for freight trains as well as the Bakerloo line.
| blitzar wrote:
| Heathrow has 115 gates but only does 50 departures an hour.
| jonp888 wrote:
| For a full long distance train pausing between two multi-
| hour trips it's reasonable.
|
| 5 Minutes for disembarking, 10 minutes cleaning, 10 minutes
| for boarding and you have 25 minutes platform occupancy.
| But on top of that the tracks will be blocked by the train
| going in and out for a few extra minutes, you need to find
| a slot on the line itself, and you need to allow for
| disruption.
|
| It's all very inefficient in terms of occupying scarce and
| inelastic inner-city track capacity, so modern practice is
| to build through stations if at all possible and send
| trains off to sidings to be cleaned, but that wasn't
| practical 100 years ago.
| rwmj wrote:
| They do close the station entrance at Euston with some
| regularity when trains are not running (which happens
| annoyingly often because of the parlous state of the railways).
| pjc50 wrote:
| London Underground does close access to platforms when they are
| at capacity.
|
| The station itself is probably running the maximum number of
| trains possible. The plan for increasing throughput northwards
| is HS2, which the previous government put on hold.
| waiwai933 wrote:
| My understanding is that the crush risk at Euston is entirely
| an operational issue of Network Rail's making (NR being the
| station facility owner), by deliberately not announcing
| platforms until the last moment, causing passengers to run to
| the platform en masse. If platforms were announced earlier, the
| crush risk would be seriously mitigated.
|
| The obvious next question is whether platforms _can_ be
| announced earlier - to which the answer is, as I understand it,
| yes. The platforms are known about much further in advance and
| the reason for the delay appears to be a combination of
| intransigence by Euston management and a lack of sufficient
| ticket gateline staff by the train operators.
| percevalve wrote:
| Am I correct to say the sacked engineer has a regular show on
| Youtube ? https://www.youtube.com/@GarethDennisTV
| smcl wrote:
| You are correct, he's also been a guest on "Well There's Your
| Problem" (an engineering disasters podcast/channel) and
| TRASHFUTURE (UK tech/politics podcast) a few times.
| blcknight wrote:
| The engineer has a lengthy thread on Twitter
|
| https://x.com/GarethDennis/status/1829036280996315637
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| And mastodon:
|
| https://mas.to/@GarethDennis/113043981557507889
| stuaxo wrote:
| Starmers promise of very similar policies to the Tories, but
| operated more competently playing out.
|
| On the other hand he doesn't handle bad press well, let's see how
| this goes.
| smcl wrote:
| This occurred before Labour took office - Hendy was the chair
| of Network Rail at the time. However as Starmer appointed him
| Transport Minister it'll be interesting to see what he does. I
| think it'll just be swept aside and ignored because they're too
| focussed on Austerity 2.0
| rsynnott wrote:
| Honestly I'd expect they just fire Hendy; only in the job a
| month, so low cost of replacement, and it's a bad look.
| smcl wrote:
| You'd hope so but Starmer's a bit weird - seems to want to
| look like he's in charge (suspending the seven who voted
| against the government on the 2 child cap) so it wouldn't
| surprise me if he tries to brush it off and do nothing. The
| papers are largely all still with him and I haven't seen
| this story getting picked up outside Politico so it's
| possible they'll just agree to spike it and move on :-/
| keyshapegeo99 wrote:
| Guardian are reporting on it now, so it's slowly
| trickling out.
| smcl wrote:
| Yeah I just saw now, that's good.
| michaelt wrote:
| The article that got the guy fired is [1] apparently. If you
| search for "Gareth Dennis" - honestly his criticisms seem pretty
| mild.
|
| My experience is the UK rail network targets truly patronising
| levels of safety. Signs and announcements on the dangers of
| running. Announcements on the dangers of slippery floors in wet
| weather. Announcements and signs about the importance of holding
| the handrail on stairs. Special extra video screens and
| announcements about the dangers of taking luggage on escalators.
| Announcements and warning signs that a flight of stairs is
| particularly long and tiring. Announcements on the dangers of
| using your phone while walking. Announcements that it's good to
| carry a bottle of water in hot weather.
|
| I'm surprised this guy got fired - in the rail network I know,
| they'd have addressed his concerns by adding even more posters
| and announcements.
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240414153709/https://www.indep...
| sealeck wrote:
| I genuinely don't see the harm of these things - I often think
| the issue is that lots of measures improve safety at the
| margins (e.g. if someone is drunk and stumbling down the stairs
| this announcement might help them) rather than on average. That
| is: many safety features will produce limited tangible benefit
| to the average person most of the time, but they do reduce
| accidents which normally happen at the tail end of the
| distribution in more extreme circumstances.
| newsclues wrote:
| You think stumbling drunk people are helped by signs and
| announcements?
| justinclift wrote:
| Sometimes, probably yes? :)
| newsclues wrote:
| I'd love to see the research that would substantiate
| that, from anecdotal evidence, stumbling drunks don't
| read or listen to anyone.
| jahewson wrote:
| Ha ahahahahahah ha.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Behold, the last man.
| cwillu wrote:
| Banner blindness. If 95% of safety signage is banal and
| useless to most people, then most people will simply stop
| paying attention to signage.
|
| Putting up a sign is not a free action!
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| To be honest this is a general problem with the UK. Try
| driving on any major street and you'll realize it's
| plastered with mostly useless signs. A dozen warnings
| assault your senses at any one time, which makes it very
| difficult to pick out what is actually important. This is
| compounded by sometimes completely braindead implementation
| of rules. E.g. most bus lanes in London can be used by
| motorcyclists, but some cannot. There's no rhyme or reason,
| the entire thing is decided by a small blue sign at the
| start of a particular stretch which may or may not have an
| even smaller motorbike icon on it - among an icon for a
| bus, taxi and pushbike. Whoever thought this is a good idea
| is either a moron or deliberately wanted to extract fines
| from motorcyclists who accidentally use the wrong bus lane.
| logifail wrote:
| > To be honest this is a general problem with the UK
|
| Hotel lifts would appear to be another example of this.
| Automated "doors closing" / "doors opening" announcements
| seem to be present almost everywhere.
|
| Presumably a significant number people suffer appaling
| crush injuries from lift doors in other countries ... or
| maybe they don't, and companies across the UK just let
| their Health and Safety conslutants get the upper hand.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| ...or visually impaired and thus use those announcements
| to understand what state the lift is in.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Lol yeah of all the examples to choose
|
| Why are the pavements at crossings so bumpy?! It's
| political correctness gone mad!
| logifail wrote:
| > ...or visually impaired and thus use those
| announcements to understand what state the lift is in
|
| ...but only in lifts in the UK? No, that's not a credible
| hypothesis.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| They're not only in UK lifts and even if they were, that
| still wouldn't change the intention of those
| announcements.
| consteval wrote:
| We have those in the US too but we use beeps. Some
| elevators do use speech so you'll hear "going up"
| sometimes.
| miki123211 wrote:
| Blind person here, I find the "doors closing" / "doors
| opening" announcements pretty tiresome, and I don't think
| they provide any benefit to us.
|
| They sometimes even make things worse. Especially on
| bilingual elevators (not that uncommon in European
| countries where English isn't an official language),
| there are so many announcements that the elevator just
| can't keep up when there's a lot of traffic. I've seen a
| few elevators that were always a few announcements behind
| during periods of high activity.
|
| The "lift (elevator) going up / down" announcements, on
| the other hand, are quite helpful, and I vastly prefer
| the European system than the American mess of ADA-
| compliant beeps.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Why is the American system a mess? One chime for up, two
| for down. It's simple and doesn't bother anybody.
| vizzier wrote:
| (speaking as a person who isn't blind) The biggest
| omission seems to be that there is nothing to tell you
| what floor you've arrived at. This is probably fine for
| an empty elevator but as soon as it gets busy and there
| are 10s of floors I'd imagine it gets hard to navigate.
| graemep wrote:
| I agree. Trying to track it all can be distracting.
| gambiting wrote:
| I'm sorry, but UK is positively devoid of road signs
| compared to some other countries lol, I've been driving
| here for well over a decade and it's really nice how few
| signs are here and it mostly relies on common sense.
|
| Compare to your average road in Poland:
|
| https://motofakty.pl/co-5-metrow-znak/ar/c4-16143839
|
| 67 road signs on a 360 metre long stretch of road - and
| to me, what's shown in the picture is very typical,
| especially in big cities. There are soooo many signs it's
| close to impossible to read all of them and still look at
| the road.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > Try driving on any major street and you'll realize it's
| plastered with mostly useless signs
|
| This is not in line with my personal experience. Can you
| provide some examples of useless signs on typical roads
| in the UK?
| cameronh90 wrote:
| The "tunnel ahead" sign always struck me as particularly
| pointless. Who needs that sign? Surely if you're driving
| towards a tunnel, the enormous tunnel itself is the
| indication you need that you're heading towards a tunnel?
|
| Honourable mentions for "humps ahead".
| andylynch wrote:
| Those are for truck drivers and those carrying dangerous
| goods The Blackwall Tunnel in London has those signs
| starting something like ten miles south (ie on the edge
| of the city!), to try an ensure such vehicles don't reach
| the tunnel unwittingly and force it to be closed.
| consteval wrote:
| We have these in the US too because we have a ton of
| Semi's and big rigs. They can get stuck. Usually the
| signs include the clearance too, like 12'8".
|
| There's some funny videos online of trucks getting a
| haircut from these. So seems necessary to me.
| jasoncartwright wrote:
| I saw myself doing this in realtime when visiting
| California for the first time. The initial shock of seeing
| signs that warned of cancer causing chemicals in buildings
| quickly faded when I realised they were on every building -
| soon becoming as blind to them as the locals.
| robryk wrote:
| Is it still not a free action if it replaced an ad?
| philipov wrote:
| That makes it literally not free - it was paid for with
| the opportunity cost of the ad.
| Phemist wrote:
| At a society level, ads are paid for with the opportunity
| cost of other things that people could be thinking about,
| e.g. cancer-curing drugs. We can therefore say that ads
| cause cancer.
| Phemist wrote:
| Additionally, the ones, whose ad-induced distraction
| would most benefit society, will not see these ads as
| they will likely not take the subway.
| SllX wrote:
| Both are at the cost of a generally more tranquil and
| quiet environment. I would take the most boring, crack-
| filled and grayest concrete wall over someone else's
| messaging whether it is paid for or the agency's own
| propaganda.
| jellicle wrote:
| One of the reasons that people like many tourist
| destinations is that many tourist destinations forbid
| most outdoor advertising. It's subtle, probably many
| tourists don't even realize it, but it changes the entire
| feel of a place.
| 2-3-7-43-1807 wrote:
| it's not so much "harmful" as it is a symptom of and also
| reinforcing a society mentality of immature and infantile
| irresponsibility. but one might also argue it is harming
| visual and acoustic silence by constantly announcing
| something and hanging signs everywhere.
| logifail wrote:
| > I genuinely don't see the harm of these things [..] they do
| reduce accidents
|
| It would be good to see actual data backing up this
| hypothesis.
|
| The cynic in me says another equally plausible hypothesis
| would be that this is entirely about the
| owner/operator/landlord avoiding any legal responsibility for
| accidents than actually reducing the number of accidents.
| tim333 wrote:
| My mother had a job coming up with such warnings. She was a
| 'home safety technician' for the local council, advising
| people not to fall off ladders and the like. It seems to
| work like there are statistics that so many people end up
| in hospital after falling of a ladder or whatever and the
| council thinks we must fix this, we'll hire someone to
| educate the public. The odd poster probably doesn't make
| much difference to the number of people falling but it was
| quite an easy and entertaining job for my mum.
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| The posters and announcements won't make anything safer. They
| are CYA for the time the risk materializes.
| zero_k wrote:
| Exactly. See Sidney Dekker's Field Guide to Understanding
| Human Error. The posters do (almost) nothing -- other than
| covering the backside of those who put them up, and doing
| safety theatre. Looks good, does nothing for safety.
|
| The same author, Sidney Dekker, has a very good book about
| how to deal with someone like this whistleblower. It's called
| "Just Culture". Well worth a read. Spolier: It's not to
| silence them, not this way. You can silence the person by,
| you know, actually doing something useful. But that requires
| actual change, and more importantly, a change in attitude.
| And you need to convince the crowds that you are doing better
| by NOT putting up posters. You'll be surprised how many
| people really think the posters help.
| throw73748 wrote:
| Posters are just a charade.
|
| Try to remove dangerous aggressive dog from transport, and see
| what happens.
| chgs wrote:
| Euston is a special case. The lack of training/concern
| (depending on your level of cynicism) of ticket validity of the
| barrier staff isn't unique (Paddington had this problem too),
| but the unique problem is the way the operator (network rail)
| do not announce platforms until the last minute leading to
| stampedes to the barriers.
|
| The announcements are just there to sell more noise cancelling
| headphones in the on-station shops.
| pm215 wrote:
| I think at Kings Cross also they have a tendency to not
| announce platforms until quite soon before departure.
| michaelt wrote:
| Unlike Euston, Kings Cross was extensively renovated for
| the 2012 olympics, which by the standards of UK rail
| stations is a very recent upgrade.
|
| They seem to have built it with enough capacity that they
| can announce platforms at the last minute and send everyone
| scurrying without causing any great danger.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Kings Cross is a mess of different systems, especially as
| the whole Kings Cross/ St Pancras complex rather than
| solely Kings Cross (which is only a dozen platforms). The
| low numbered Kings Cross platforms (zero through seven)
| are all accessed via a sideways entrance gate line, which
| is not good at all and you'd clearly never do that unless
| there's no economic alternative.
| michaelt wrote:
| Oh absolutely. The underground bit is a total maze.
| Crossings on all the nearby roads are a nightmare.
| Nowhere near enough seating.
|
| But that gate line you mention has loads of ticket
| barriers - there's zero crush risk.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| 10-15 minutes in my experience.
| masfuerte wrote:
| They delay platform announcements because they believe that a
| platform crammed full of waiting passengers will become a
| crush risk when the arriving passengers start to disembark.
|
| When they announce the platform there is often enough time to
| stroll, but people rush because they want a seat.
|
| It's a hard problem to solve in the short term.
| lol768 wrote:
| Anyone in the know knows where to look to find out the
| platform before it's "sanctioned for the public to be
| informed about it".
|
| And no, there isn't always time to stroll to the train,
| I've seen some really, really late announcements. Couple
| this with very large countdown timers that they actually
| _added_ recently to each platform and you can see exactly
| why people feel stressed and rush.
|
| > They delay platform announcements because they believe
| that a platform crammed full of waiting passengers will
| become a crush risk when the arriving passengers start to
| disembark.
|
| The alternative is forcing them all to wait in the same
| cramped concourse area (with most space lost to retail
| units). During disruption, it gets genuinely difficult to
| move through this area. It has felt unpleasant in normal
| use for a while, but when there are cancellations and
| delays it feels positively dangerous. I am not exaggerating
| when I say that it feels very much like it's only a matter
| of time before something happens and someone gets crushed
| or trampled.
|
| There's none of this nonsense at some other London termini,
| and Birmingham New Street manages to let people wait on the
| platforms. Why can't Euston?
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| > Anyone in the know knows where to look to find out the
| platform...
|
| And for anyone who _isn 't_ in the know, that's Realtime
| Trains[1]. It isn't correct 100% of the time; it uses the
| public record of train movements (TRUST) to predict which
| platform a train will arrive at, but is prevented by
| National Rail Enquiries from using the live status and
| delay data which official departure boards show (Darwin).
| That means that if the platform is changed at the last
| minute it is not certain that Realtime Trains will be
| able to detect the change.
|
| [1]: https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/
| ralferoo wrote:
| > there is often enough time to stroll, but people rush
| because they want a seat.
|
| I'm someone who used to frequently catch the last train
| north to Birmingham on a Saturday night (9:40pm), and it
| was usually full and so some people were without a seat. Of
| course we all rushed to try to get a seat. IMHO, it's
| foolishness to think people would do otherwise in that
| situation - after all who wants to stand for over an hour
| and a half when you've paid over PS30 for the ticket?
| bee_rider wrote:
| Maybe they need reserved seating, haha.
| Jackson__ wrote:
| Curiously, I've had the exact same problem when I was in
| Britain. At Heathrow Airport. They would not announce which
| gate flights leave from until ~20 minutes before boarding.
|
| Considering there's no 'crush risk' in this scenario, what
| even is the point of it? In the end I just used any of the
| myriad of online sites that list flight data to know which
| gate I needed to head to 1.5 hours before everyone else,
| and got to enjoy some peace and quiet.
| SllX wrote:
| > The announcements are just there to sell more noise
| cancelling headphones in the on-station shops.
|
| This is a good--albeit shameless--business model. They could
| probably do the same thing in San Francisco's MUNI stations.
| Lammy wrote:
| The T line just opened and I'm already sick of hearing the
| "transfer here" message eight goddamn times when my train
| passes Powell Station. It plays in four languages each
| time, once when Powell is the next station and again at
| Powell itself. Sounds like they made them part of the
| "station name" audio itself based on the way they are cued.
| DrBazza wrote:
| You're talking about railway lines and stations with ad-hoc
| upgrades that are as much as 200 years old (yes). Most of the
| network is comfortably over 100 years old and trains were
| slower, and frankly, people were less mollycoddled.
|
| But, with regards to the article, he's 100% correct, Euston is
| dangerous. And it's currently one of the worst central London
| stations for things going wrong. It's pretty much every other
| week at the moment. London Bridge used to be as bad with
| overcrowding until they rebuilt most of it.
|
| Then again, Euston was supposed to be redeveloped for HS2, and
| that's been kicked into the long grass, even though all the
| hard work has been done. I don't think there's anyone truly as
| stupid as the UK government.
| yodelshady wrote:
| Interesting, "the Office of Rail and Road ... issued Network
| Rail with an improvement notice"
|
| For the benefit of readers not versed with UK regulation, an
| improvement notice is a formal instrument under the powers of
| the Health and Safety Executive. Whilst short of a prosecution
| notice, it definitely indicates that the powers that be are
| Officially Not Happy with, in this case, Network Rail.
| truculent wrote:
| The most egregious ones were ubiquitous signs on the London
| Underground stating that travellers should take care on the
| escalators; there were 111 accidents on the escalators last
| year, after all.
|
| There are over 4 million tube journeys a day[1].
|
| [1]: https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-
| releases/2023/novemb...
| closewith wrote:
| So the signs work!
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| Those accidents can be life changing, and often cause delays
| to services or dangerous levels of congestion during rush
| hour. I also suspect TfL are motivated to reduce liability -
| if they can show on CCTV somebody walking past a sign saying
| to take care, and then not taking care, TfL's coffers (i.e.
| the public's, it's not a private profit making entity), can
| be protected a little more from egregious legal claims.
| GoToRO wrote:
| those are just to limit their liability: we told them not to so
| it's not our fault. The real safety, the one that they should
| provide is somewhere else.
| dazc wrote:
| I believe the purpose of these safety warnings is more about
| mitigating liability for accidents rather than any true concern
| for traveller's well being.
| red_admiral wrote:
| The UK rail network is in the unhappy position of getting sued
| whenever someone gets hurt, however stupid they're being. I
| think there was a case where some youths cut through the
| fencing around a depot, climbed on a train and got killed by
| the overhead wire - and then Network Rail got fined for not
| having a more vandal-proof fence or something like that.
| aix1 wrote:
| This? https://www.orr.gov.uk/search-news/fine-for-network-
| rail-fol...
| philjohn wrote:
| But then trains highly overcrowded so in the case of another
| Greyrigg the death and injury toll would be far higher.
|
| But affording to a train company there is "no upper limit on
| the number of passengers in a given train carriage". I did
| point out that the laws of physics, and basic human physiology
| would refute that assertion.
|
| So, maybe safety theatre rather than patronising levels of
| safety.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _Signs and announcements on the dangers of running.
| Announcements on the dangers of slippery floors in wet weather.
| Announcements and signs about the importance of holding the
| handrail on stairs. Special extra video screens and
| announcements about the dangers of taking luggage on
| escalators. Announcements and warning signs that a flight of
| stairs is particularly long and tiring. Announcements on the
| dangers of using your phone while walking. Announcements that
| it 's good to carry a bottle of water in hot weather._
|
| I don't think there is a shred of evidence that being bombarded
| with neurotic fretting improves safety - here in the states
| this is usually recognized as limitation of liability. Juries
| will accept "we warned you," as a counterbalance to their
| universal tendency to want to side with the little guy against
| the giant corporation.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Well, it could be liability related.
|
| But, falls are basically the only way people get injured at
| DC's Metro so it seems to make sense to have significant
| signage about that. I'd have to imagine there's nothing
| unique about DC so it's probably the same story for the UK.
|
| "96% of the customer injuries were related to slips and falls
| within rail stations, and about 52% of those were on
| escalators." [1]. The stat for employees was 40% with being
| struck by an object in #2 at 25%.
|
| [1]: https://wmata.com/about/calendar/events/upload/3A-Metro-
| s-Sa...
| whatshisface wrote:
| What's the connection between signage talking about falls
| and the rate of falls? I don't see any.
| hex4def6 wrote:
| I'm not sure being reminded not to slip would reduce my
| likelihood of slipping.
|
| Seems like things like making sure floor transitions are
| mild, adequate drainage, textured floors would be more
| effective. (polished stone and concrete are a nightmare
| with some shoes that I own in wet weather).
| techwizrd wrote:
| I work in transportation safety, primarily aviation but we
| also support WMATA. We usually define barriers which
| prevent, control, or mitigate an accident or undesired
| state [0]. Safety systems often require warning signage.
| Anecdotally, I find that regulators, companies, etc. use
| signage or safety bulletins than active barriers [0]
| because they are cheaper and quicker to implement. Even
| when they implement something like, say, abrasive floor
| treatments [1], that is only one barrier and likely
| imperceptible to the public.
|
| Warning signage may be helpful, but I am skeptical of its
| effectiveness (especially as implemented). For example,
| "ice-warning signs do not have a statistically significant
| impact on the frequency or severity of vehicular accidents
| that involve ice." [2]
|
| (Disclaimer: Opinions are my own.)
|
| [0] https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/solutions/enablon/bowt
| ie/ex...
|
| [1] https://www.nata.aero/data/files/webinar_documents/prev
| entin...
|
| [2] https://doi.org/10.1016/S0001-4575(00)00020-8
| jdietrich wrote:
| _> My experience is the UK rail network targets truly
| patronising levels of safety._
|
| It's clearly working, because the British railway network is
| the safest large network in Europe, despite some pretty
| dilapidated infrastructure.
|
| https://international-railway-safety-council.com/safety-stat...
| iggldiggl wrote:
| Getting passenger fatalities down is mainly achieved by not
| letting your trains crash, and keeping an eye on the
| platform-train interface. Copious announcements about how to
| safely walk around a railway station probably only make a
| minor difference.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| What stuck out to me wasn't the signage, but "See it, say it.
| Sorted." Right along with "mind the gap!" that is going to be
| my enduring memory of UK rail.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| "If you see something that doesn't look right, speak to staff
| or text British Transport Police on 61016. We'll sort it. See
| it, say it, sorted."
|
| It haunts my dreams.
| TylerE wrote:
| "See something say something" signs are common in the US in
| places like subways and airports.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Sure, but the "See it, say it, sorted" announcement is
| played over and over ad nauseam on the train; it's not just
| a sign. It's the national rail equivalent of "mind the gap"
| on the tube, which is also said over and over again. In the
| case of the tube it makes a little more sense since the
| ridership is changing significantly at every stop. But on a
| 4+ hour ride up to Edinburgh, it is pretty redundant to
| make the announcement every minute or so.
| jahewson wrote:
| No this is not the same. The U.K. has taken it to ludicrous
| levels.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| >My experience is the UK rail network targets truly patronising
| levels of safety. Signs and announcements on the dangers of
| running. Announcements on the dangers of slippery floors in wet
| weather. Announcements and signs about the importance of
| holding the handrail on stairs. Special extra video screens and
| announcements about the dangers of taking luggage on
| escalators. Announcements and warning signs that a flight of
| stairs is particularly long and tiring. Announcements on the
| dangers of using your phone while walking. Announcements that
| it's good to carry a bottle of water in hot weather.
|
| Everything wrong with the UK today can be summarized as society
| going from "Mind the gap" to this insanity.
| foldr wrote:
| I agree that the announcements are annoying, but isn't this
| an overly emotional response? UK railways are extremely safe
| (as shown in the following link that someone else already
| posted here), and the annoying announcements might just be
| one of the less appealing aspects of an overall safety
| culture which is working as designed. I certainly don't see
| any connection between annoying announcements and any of the
| real problems facing the UK at present. E.g. what do they
| have to do with the housing crisis, or the social care
| crisis, or ...?
|
| https://international-railway-safety-council.com/safety-
| stat...
| ReptileMan wrote:
| It showed that culture of the place changed. And culture is
| what determines how the rest of society fares.
| jahewson wrote:
| The annoying announcements are due to very a real problem
| facing the U.K. - what do you think the "it" is that we're
| supposed to be spotting? It's not a herd of unicorns.
| jahewson wrote:
| Oh it's absurd. When I grew up in Britain we used to joke about
| America and how they had a sign on everything but the U.K. is
| now 10x worse. The endless announcements. The sign language
| video on every single timetable screen (Why? can deaf people
| not read? How do they navigate the 99.9999% of the world that
| lacks such screens? Can't their iPhone help?). It's madness.
|
| My favourite is how the classic "mind the gap" (worthy as some
| of those gaps were quite big and it varies from station to
| station) has been replaced with "mind the gap between the train
| and the platform" as if some people are too stupid to know
| where the gap is? (And no sign language videos for that, so
| presumably it's a slaughterhouse for the hard of hearing!).
|
| And what is the "it" that we're supposed to be seeing and
| spotting anyway? Maybe they could solve that problem instead.
| gchadwick wrote:
| Worth noting the story here has subtly that the headline cannot
| accurately capture. For one I wouldn't say this is about raising
| safety concerns or whistle-blowing, it's about how the employer
| views employees talking to the media.
|
| The engineer in question was sacked for stating 'You're talking
| about thousands of people squished into that space. It's not just
| uncomfortable, it's not just unpleasant, it's unsafe.' in a media
| interview (see https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/euston-
| trains-stati... looks like the unsafe part of that quote made the
| headline).
|
| Here he was just amplifying already public information that the
| Office of Rail and Road had raised concerns and issued an
| improvement notice (which is reference in the article before he
| is quoted). I guess they hadn't actually declared it 'unsafe'
| though.
|
| I think it is reasonable for employers to require employees don't
| go making negative comments in the media, though that is tempered
| by the public interest in raising the profile of safety concerns.
| Perhaps here the engineer felt no-one was taking the improvement
| notice seriously and needed more incentive to do so? Could also
| be he felt he wasn't trying to cause any upset at all and was
| simply stating what was already public known.
|
| It does feel here that the minister that triggered the sacking
| was just being thin-skinned. He saw a newspaper headline that
| angered him and sought to take it out on someone. Perhaps some
| disciplinary action was warranted (maybe improvements were indeed
| underway and the engineer shouldn't go causing extra needless
| public alarm) but sacking him looks to be a big overreaction.
| smcl wrote:
| In this case it's a little more than just an employer/employee
| relationship. It's the head of a non-departmental government
| body (at the time Hendy lead Network Rail, he's now Minister
| for Transport) threatening to not award contracts to a railway
| services provider unless they terminate an employee who voiced
| safety concerns publicly. Notably these concerns were shared by
| the Office of Rail and Road (i.e. ... the government).
| XCabbage wrote:
| A "non-departmental government body" - more usually known in
| the press as a "quango" or "quasi-autonomous non-government
| body", because we cannot make up our mind in the UK about
| what things are part of the "government" and which are not.
| :)
| b800h wrote:
| The other point worth raising is that the employee has stated
| on Twitter that he had a media agreement with his employer that
| allowed him to speak independently (presumably because he runs
| a YouTube channel, as per the comments elsewhere on this
| thread).
| halicarnassus wrote:
| In the comments here I read a lot about if this is whistleblowing
| or not, or if disciplinary measures are warranted for an employee
| "badmouthing" an employer's client while not having an official
| mandate to speak in public, while mostly ignoring the threats
| made by a government official.
|
| This is exactly the problem why the world sucks so hard.
|
| The engineer, certainly knowledgeable in this field, made a
| measured public remark, which could have saved lives. He has done
| nothing wrong, because he didn't claim to speak on behalf of his
| employer, and has the right to speak his mind as a person. In
| public, and with a lot of reach.
|
| The government official, however, applied unconstitutional
| pressure to get the engineer fired and threatened his employer to
| lose business. Humanly very low and damaging to future public
| rail infrastructure, if a capable company is not allowed to
| provide services anymore and therefore most likely to increase
| prices through diminished competition.
|
| If anyone should lose their job over this matter, it clearly
| should be the UK rail minister.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| There is no constitution here, your existence and rights as a
| British citizen is at the convenience of the state.
| graemep wrote:
| Its not that simple.
|
| There is a body of constitutional law. There is extensive law
| governing what powers ministers have - powers are granted to
| them by legislation.
|
| There are human rights granted by law and treaty. Everything
| from some clauses of the Magna Carta that are still in force
| https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-
| heritage/evolutionofp... to the European Convention on Human
| Rights.
| philwelch wrote:
| And thanks to parliamentary supremacy any and all of those
| protections can be repealed by a simple majority of the
| House of Commons.
| graemep wrote:
| True, but that is a long way from how I read the comment
| I replied too
| philwelch wrote:
| In countries that actually have a strong constitution--
| the US is the primary example though I hope others exist
| --the Constitution itself is the supreme law of the land
| and is, by design, difficult to amend. When legislatures
| pass laws that exceed the bounds of the Constitution, the
| courts strike down those laws as null and void.
|
| In that sense, Britain does not have a constitution.
| Obviously it has a constitution in some sense, because
| there is always some set of laws, norms, traditions, and
| historical precedents that constitute the basis of
| government. But this is a much weaker sense of the term.
| For instance, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 was a
| "constitutional" law that supposedly made it impossible
| to call a snap election, but a snap election was
| nonetheless called in 2019 via the Early Parliamentary
| General Election Act 2019, which only required a simple
| majority because it had equivalent authority to the FTPA
| itself.
| tengwar2 wrote:
| No, in that sense the UK does not have an American-style
| constitution - no more, no less. It is not accidental
| that Parliament can reverse any decision taken by an
| earlier Parliament: in fact it is one of the most
| important parts of the constitution that no Parliament
| can take a decision which binds a later one. It is
| different from the American design, yes, but the way in
| which the American constitution is used does not seem
| praiseworthy, not does it suggest that it would be wise
| to copy it.
| lesuorac wrote:
| > When legislatures pass laws that exceed the bounds of
| the Constitution, the courts strike down those laws as
| null and void.
|
| Well, that's not actually in the US constitution.
|
| And, the Executive branch is free to ignore what the
| Judicial branch [1] does since ya know, it's the
| Executive branch that would execute any decisions.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_Nation_v._Geo
| rgia#Aft...
| foldr wrote:
| I'm not sure the US is currently a particularly great
| advertisment for its model of constitutional government.
| In place of acts of Parliament that have a relatively
| clear interpretation (and that can be undone or modified
| by elected representatives), there is legislative
| deadlock and an endless series of judicial seances
| attempting to determine whether or not Ben Franklin would
| have supported gay marriage, abortion rights and
| concealed carry of MANPADS if he'd been born 300 years
| later.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| Laws are loosely written to effectively apply to anything
| and are interpreted by the courts. Sentences are
| subjectively and unevenly applied depending on the
| 'circumstances' of the offender.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| I'd like to take this moment to thank the European Union
| for our human rights /s
| foldr wrote:
| No /s required. You can see a list of landmark judgments
| here, some of which apply to the UK. (Although you're
| confusing the EU with the Council of Europe.)
|
| https://www.coe.int/en/web/human-rights-
| convention/landmark-...
| callamdelaney wrote:
| So now we need a council of Europe referendum?
|
| As you know human rights existed long before somebody
| decided to sign away our interpretation of them to a
| foreign body.
|
| Weird how the right to liberty and security doesn't apply
| to native populations.
| immibis wrote:
| The same as an American citizen, then. That piece of paper
| locked up in the national archives (or wherever) didn't come
| running, armed with a gun, to save the life of George Floyd
| or anyone else.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| No but it is a basis in law for eg freedom of speech, that
| sort of right is none existent here. Id much rather have a
| formal, immutable constitution.
| foldr wrote:
| There is a basis in UK law for freedom of speech (most
| recently, Article 10 of the Human Rights act). It's true
| that protections for free speech are not as extensive in
| the UK as they are in the US, but the US is the outlier
| in that case. Very few countries have free speech
| protections as strong as the First Amendment.
| immibis wrote:
| The UK laws elaborate on what is and isn't free speech,
| while the US law basically just says "there shall be free
| speech (as far as Congress is concerned. Other parties
| can do whatever they like to stifle speech)"
| callamdelaney wrote:
| UK law is extremely loosely defined. Judges are
| ultimately responsible for its interpretation, which they
| do relatively literally - so as long as the police and
| CPS bring a case there's a good chance you've fallen foul
| of the law, subjectively - which is how they are written.
| E.g malicious communications act.
| foldr wrote:
| The US constitution is even more loosely defined if you
| exclude the outcome of hundreds of years of judicial
| interpretations of it. Hence the endless disagreements
| over what is or isn't constitutional.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| Which must be tosh, you can literally go to prison for
| years here for stating facts. What if some day somebody
| takes offence to 2+2=4? The guy who says 2+2=4 goes to
| jail for years whilst rapists and murders get away with 6
| months or suspended sentences. But don't mention that, or
| else!
|
| Even self defence is a dubious right here.
| jonp888 wrote:
| If you're trying to compare Britain unfavourably to the US
| with this comment then that doesn't really hold up.
|
| People are sacked all the time in the US for bringing their
| employer into disrepute, and it doesn't even matter whether
| they actually did or not, since the employer doesn't have to
| give a reason anyway.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| What? That's a clause with almost every UK contract I've
| ever signed. The US constitution doesn't touch on
| employment rights.
|
| Id also point out that the UK is generally an extremely
| poor country, living standards for the majority are low,
| income is extremely low after taxes, especially compared to
| the states.
|
| Britain compares itself unfavourably to the US on almost
| every metric that matters.
| smcl wrote:
| > while not having an official mandate to speak in public
|
| Gareth Dennis has been a public figure for a while, appearing
| on BBC News a few times. So there was apparently a provision
| for this in his contract with Systra:
| https://x.com/GarethDennis/status/1829053692508623154
| keyshapegeo99 wrote:
| Systra also lauded his media appearances on their website: ht
| tps://web.archive.org/web/20240829120751/https://www.systr...
|
| > _[Gareth 's] passion and enthusiasm for all things rail are
| well-known across the sector through his weekly #Railnatter
| podcast and as a regular national press rail commentator_
| smcl wrote:
| Ah that's an interesting revelation. But yeah totally
| unsurprising really, he's very good at talking in plain,
| accessible English about rail-related matters that might
| otherwise cause people to glaze over and ignore. And it's
| not like he's ever been a shit-stirrer either - in the
| interview in question he was pretty reasonable. It's just
| that this guy Lord Hendy has taken a dislike to NR being
| called out and started a little vendetta against Dennis.
| n4r9 wrote:
| What's great about this is that instead of covering up the
| issue, Henry's behaviour has caused it to blow up and become
| way more visible. I certainly hadn't heard about any of this
| until reading OP.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I suspect the minister may be an ex-minister soon, alright;
| it's not a good look, and he's only been in the job a month or
| so, so replacing wouldn't be a huge deal.
| alephnerd wrote:
| He's also a mid-level minister, so it's pretty easy to can
| him.
|
| Most Ministers are just political appointees anyhow - the
| actual work is done by the Civil Service.
| jonp888 wrote:
| > he's only been in the job a month or so, so replacing
| wouldn't be a huge deal
|
| He's way, way than more than just some guy who has been rail
| minister for a month, he's one of the most respected, perhaps
| the most respected transport executive in Britain(at least
| until yesterday). He's not an elected politician, he has
| worked professionally in rail transportation since 1975.
|
| For 10 years he was Chief Executive of Transport for London
| which runs all public transport in London. Following that,
| for the past 10 years he was and still is Chairman of Network
| Rail, the organisation which is responsible for the entire
| British Railway Network. It's in this capacity that he sent
| the letter, not as a minister.
|
| Unless this turns into some huge scandal, which seems
| unlikely, he'll be fine.
| XCabbage wrote:
| What aspect of the UK's nebulous "constitution" do you claim
| was violated here? (Or are you just reflexively/thoughtlessly
| saying "unconstitutional" because it would be a First Amendment
| violation in the USA?)
| Tor3 wrote:
| Well, the UK doesn't have a constitution, so technically
| you're correct in mentioning that, but it should also be said
| that something like this happening in Europe is beyond
| shocking. It sounds like an April's fool joke. But isn't.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > it clearly should be the UK rail minister.
|
| Absolutely. He's guilty of precisely what he complains about.
| He suggests that this engineer is implicating the "safety of
| Network Rail" whereas he's just implicating the safety of a
| _single decision_.
|
| Instead of reacting to a single statement the minister has
| decided to implicate his entire job. Which is madness. He
| should be deeply ashamed of how he abused his position, and
| quite frankly, for his inability to accept and react
| appropriately to criticism.
|
| A giant baby if I've ever seen one.
| boomskats wrote:
| Would anyone care to speculate how something like this would
| potentially play out in another Western European country? If all
| the abuse of power and overstepping/targeting was unchallenged
| public knowledge, would there be more of a reaction?
| arder wrote:
| This really sets the government up for failure. The next time
| there's a tragedy on our rail system the question I'm going to
| ask is "Would this have happened if the person in charge took
| safety concerns seriously". This just makes Hendy's position
| totally untenable.
| Havoc wrote:
| Politics seems to attract the worst type of people
| mjburgess wrote:
| One of the reasons I'm against nationalisation, is that when the
| government contracts out services to the private sector it hold
| them to a high standard -- and regulates in lots of saftey/etc.
| conditions.
|
| When the gov runs services there's a massive conflict of interest
| in regulating them properly: its embarrassing for the gov,
| there's no accountability for profitability/sustainable-use-of-
| resources/etc.
|
| So whilst centrist (and center-left on some matters), I'm largely
| in favour of a gov which runs via contracted services with
| significant regulation and oversight.
|
| Lots of cover-up stories have come out recently which show that
| political control over key services undermines their
| accountability, not improves it.
| h1fra wrote:
| You are not from Britain (or Europe), no?
|
| Privatisation of the rail in UK is a nightmare, the government
| is not holding the private sector to a high standard at all.
| High profit and High standard are barely compatible, I'm not
| sure they are even good examples in the world.
| mjburgess wrote:
| Yes, I'm from the UK.
|
| 1. Compare and contrast the privately run phase of rail
| service with the public version before the early 90s. It was
| low-use by the public and in a decrepit state.
|
| 2. The form privatisation took in the UK kept the most
| expensive, old, difficult to maintain etc. parts of the rail
| networks under public control. You saw what happened (HS2)
| when that public control was actually used to improve the
| infrastructure.
|
| ... We'll have to see what happens when MPs are suddenly
| setting budgets for rail companies, and whether you think
| you'll get what you want. I doubt it.
| smcl wrote:
| With 1) you're comparing apples to oranges and you're
| _still_ wrong. The turnaround in rail use in the UK began
| in the 1980s before the private train operating companies
| got involved. And if you 're referring to the network
| itself being in "a decrepit state" before and now being
| improved to the point where it can sustain higher
| capacities ... well you can thank Network Rail for that
| (note: not a private company). The TOCs are headed for
| nationalisation anyway, leaving the ROSCOs as the big
| privatisation "success" (in that they've extracted enormous
| profits while not exactly contributing anything
| particularly novel).
|
| What we saw with HS2 is a large (and frankly completely
| necessary) engineering project getting fucked around with
| and repeatedly chopped down until it no longer satisfied
| its original plan (providing greater capacity for both
| local and national services by providing a new North-South
| line that happened to be "high-speed") and became exactly
| what those wielding the axe that killed it accused it of
| ("just a way for some to get to London slightly faster").
| pjc50 wrote:
| > We'll have to see what happens when MPs are suddenly
| setting budgets for rail companies
|
| Good rail outcomes were obviously impossible under a Tory
| government regardless of how the control worked, but they
| _might_ be possible under a Labour government. We 'll have
| to see.
| youngtaff wrote:
| In the 70's and 80's the train system was deliberately
| underfunded and rundown so it's no wonder it got worse
| during that time
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| Japan's bullet trains, JR East is private, and the Shinkansen
| has one of the lowest average delays in the world (literally
| less than a minute).
| amiga386 wrote:
| The pressure and bullying to achieve Japan's train
| promptness sometimes kills hundreds of people, though.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amagasaki_derailment
|
| > Drivers for JR West face financial penalties for lateness
| as well as being forced into harsh and humiliating
| retraining programs known as nikkin kyoiku (Ri Qin Jiao Yu
| , "dayshift education"), which include weeding and grass-
| cutting duties during the day. The final report officially
| concluded that the retraining system was one probable cause
| of the crash. This program consisted of severe verbal
| abuse, forcing the employees to repent by writing extensive
| reports. Many experts saw the process of nikkin kyoiku as
| punishment and psychological torture, not retraining
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| A 19 year old example doesn't seem great, surely things
| can change in 20 years.
|
| Also that derailment was truly caused by surpassing the
| speed limit, which shouldn't even be possible (even more
| so today). Enforcing a speed limit by block is trivial.
| Which it looks like is what they did after.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Japan has a very different culture and a very different way
| to organize and finance everything. If you want yo copy
| their system you cant just cherry pick a single aspect and
| just assume it gone work the same way.
| tim333 wrote:
| I'm a Brit and would say the privatised rail works ok. The
| main gripe is it can be overpriced.
|
| If you look at the Wikipedia on it, rail use dropped off
| under nationalization and then pretty much doubled after it
| was privatised. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_p
| rivatisation_of...
|
| My local line / stations have been hugely upgraded over the
| period though I'm not sure you can put that down to
| privatisation. (Thameslink/Kings Cross St Pancras)
| panick21_ wrote:
| That statistic always gets used but it hides a lot of other
| macro trends and context. In North Irland you will see a
| grath that look the same without privatization.
|
| Also lots of things that came together by privatization had
| been developed at BritishRail.
|
| And anyway, it was only really private in the slights way.
| After just a few years networkrail had to be created. This
| was hugely costly and the infrastructure during the private
| time degraded.
|
| After that the government had even more diect control over
| routes and timetables then they had under BritishRail.
|
| Having the services themselves being run by private
| companies isnt all that interesting. The can only really
| innovate on underpaying employes and some user experiance.
|
| And to get this part to be private, you have to have a
| whole army of lawyer on both sides. And then again between
| the service companies and the train rental companies.
|
| The user experiance gain is completly negated by having a
| system that is so much harder to use in general. Every
| company with their own branding. Changing all the time when
| provider change.
|
| Harder to do proper ticket integration and so on and so on.
|
| Not to mention that during that period almost no new fleets
| were ordered so the majority of UK train manufacturing is
| gone. And the one that still there makes subpar trains that
| don't compte with the trains from France, Germany and
| Switzerland.
|
| In summation, I would say privatisation didnt really save
| the UK much money, arguebly it cost them money.
|
| And now privatisation is done anyway because all the
| franchises are simply controlled by the government anyway.
|
| Allowing BritishRail to continue to develop into something
| like the Swiss SBB would have been much better for Britain.
|
| Comming from Switzerland travling by train in Britain felt
| like time travling to an earlier age. There is some fancy
| knew stuff on the most important routes. But travling the
| country side in 40 year old trains and stopping at stations
| that look like nature was in the process of consuming them.
|
| In Switzerland is expensive, but you get something for
| money. In England its expensive and so much worse in so
| many dimensions.
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| british rail is privately owned. this seems to undermine your
| whole argument.
| smcl wrote:
| British Rail has ceased to exist for quite some time
| XCabbage wrote:
| Not really true. National Rail, which owns the tracks is a
| quango, not a private company. The actual train operators are
| truly privately owned but it is important to understand that
| they are not privately making any major strategic decisions
| about the network, just maintaining the rolling stock and
| providing staff; their routes, times, prices, and profits are
| mostly set by the state (with some narrow room for
| discretion) and not by the private sector.
| nayroclade wrote:
| The current state of the UK water industry doesn't seem to
| support this theory. Privatisation has only lead to water
| companies like Thames Water taking on unsustainable debt while
| paying out billions in dividends, underinvesting in
| infrastructure, and polluting like crazy. Now they are
| demanding permission from the regulator to massively hike
| prices, because the foreign investment funds that own them are
| apparently unwilling to countenance the idea of losing any
| money on their investments.
|
| Infrastructure like public transport and utilities are not, and
| never will be, functional markets, and regulation is always
| captured or ineffective in the long term. Privatisation is only
| a method to let financial markets pillage public goods.
| mjburgess wrote:
| Sure, I believe these dividend policies used to be illegal.
|
| I would certainly make it illegal to do share buybacks, and
| to issue dividends on credit.
|
| Privitisation doesnt really work with the private equity
| model that has been developed over the last decade, ie., buy
| a biz on credit and raid its resources.
|
| But i think it's easier to get these laws passed than require
| a politican investigate resource waste, bad service, etc. in
| services they are responsible for. The UK gov is structured
| to disable accountability at every level -- that's a much
| harder fix.
| phatfish wrote:
| The private sector pumps sewage into UK rivers while paying
| billions in dividends to their global investors.
|
| Then when the government tries to reign them back in the excuse
| is their company is "neither financeable nor investible"
| without customers footing the bill. No shit, it was loaded with
| debt and money syphoned out of it for 30 years.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/aug/28/tha...
|
| Exactly the same happens with private train companies in the
| UK, though hopefully not for long.
| mjburgess wrote:
| Sure, and what would happen if the gov ran the system? It's a
| 300bn fix. The only difference would be that you wouldnt know
| about it.
|
| Thankfully MPs are incentivised to publish this stuff against
| private companies.
| smcl wrote:
| Well "the gov" does run the system in Scotland. Scottish
| Water, which didn't suffer privatisation, ticks over nicely
| - providing high quality service at low cost and
| reinvesting any profits.
|
| You're inventing a hypothetical nightmare scenario while
| ignoring a very real and positive one because it's
| inconvenient for your "privatisation = good" argument.
| phatfish wrote:
| How would the government be able to hide that? There is
| oversight of the Treasury by the OBR and there is more than
| one political party in the UK, opposition MPs happily point
| out all the failures of the party in power.
|
| My view is that it is easy to accuse government services of
| being dysfunctional because there is far MORE transparency
| than for private companies. Bankrupting a water company can
| happen in plain sight by a private company because money
| that was supposed to be used to, you know, build a
| functioning sewage system is fed through a maze of offshore
| accounts for years.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > when the government contracts out services to the private
| sector it hold them to a high standard
|
| PPE Medpro?
|
| The fundamental problem with this kind of neoliberalism is that
| if you don't trust government to manage something directly,
| then outsourcing it doesn't help, because the management
| oversight still has to be done, but now it happens indirectly.
|
| It only works if you can have an actual market with actual
| market forces. What tends to get built is a "fake" market,
| where instead of individual service users picking their
| preference you get a tendering process. The rail tendering
| process is a fake market: the trains are owned by ROSCOs
| (banks), the rails are owned by the state (Network rail)
| because the private operator skimped on safety then collapsed,
| and the TOCs transfer all their staff through TUPE every time
| the franchise changes. All that changes is the livery.
|
| Specifying through contract is a lot less efficient than direct
| management (see Coase, theory of the firm). This is why Tube
| privatization failed; they got up to hundreds of thousands of
| pages of contract before realizing it wasn't going to work.
| red_admiral wrote:
| This is what we got the last time safety culture in UK railways
| was in a serious mess:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladbroke_Grove_rail_crash
|
| Some in the industry think the next such accident isn't too far
| off. Stampedes at Euston are a manageable problem by comparison.
| anentropic wrote:
| This Hendy guy sounds like a classic shit manager, only concerned
| with saving face
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| UK seems like one of the absolute worst places in the world to
| live. Why are there not more people moving out of the UK? Do they
| still think it can get better?
| tim333 wrote:
| It's a bit like that quote about democracy - it's the worst
| place apart from all the other ones. Not where really is
| perfect. The population keeps going up here with people
| immigrating for what it's worth although we've had quite a lot
| of millionaires leaving and African asylum seekers arriving on
| dinghies which is perhaps not ideal.
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| > It's a bit like that quote about democracy - it's the worst
| place apart from all the other ones.
|
| No, it's way worse than most of the others. Anywhere in the
| Anglosphere or other parts of Europe is better. Most of Asia
| is better. Most of South America is better. Even some African
| countries are probably better. I would definitely move to
| Uganda, Botswana or South Africa before I ever set foot in
| the UK.
|
| > The population keeps going up here
|
| If you promise anyone who arrives at your shore free
| healthcare, accommodation, food and some spending money, then
| of course your population will go up. Not sure how that makes
| anything better.
| tim333 wrote:
| I guess worse is in the eye of the beholder but on the
| "List of countries by Human Development Index" we're #15,
| ahead of the US (#20). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o
| f_countries_by_Human_Dev...
|
| Dunno. Are you a Brit? Think of moving anywhere?
| badpun wrote:
| I'd say uk is probably in top10-top20 places in the world to
| live.
| XCabbage wrote:
| Obviously, the retaliation is bad. Should disqualify Lord Hendy
| from his role.
|
| But I would also like to make sense of what the actual risk
| alleged to exist in Euston is, and how Gareth Dennis or the ORR
| inspector thinks it should be mitigated. And I cannot figure it
| out, at all.
|
| In Dennis's comments quoted in The Independent, for which he was
| fired, he attributes the risks at the station to the increased
| number of trains coming in and out of the station. That seems to
| imply that the crush or trample risk he perceives to exist is in
| the main lobby area of the station, _not_ on the platforms or the
| ramps leading down to the platform gates, since if it were the
| latter then the risk would exist regardless of the number of
| trains coming in and out of the station.
|
| This seemed surprising/implausible to me because all the dense
| crowds I've ever seen (and felt concerned about) in Euston have
| been on the ramps or the platforms, NOT in the lobby area which
| is massive. I struggle to imagine how a crush or stampede could
| ever happen anywhere besides the ramps and platforms. So I dug a
| bit further.
|
| The press release associated with the improvement notice
| (https://www.orr.gov.uk/search-news/rail-regulator-
| requires-c...), on the other hand, says that over summer 2023,
| there were three instances of "crowding reaching unacceptable
| levels and a lack of crowd control in place" resulting in "minor
| injuries" with potential for worse. They also complain of a lack
| of risk assessments for two unspecified "pinch points" in the
| station "where crowding is most concentrated", inadequate
| "control measures", and unacceptably poor "layout" and "signage"
| to help with flow control.
|
| The actual improvement notice, meanwhile, contains essentially no
| detail (https://orrprdpubreg1.blob.core.windows.net/docs/I-NWM-20
| 230...), just some fairly meaningless boilerplate. The entire
| explanation of the problem is "You have failed to implement, so
| far as is reasonably practicable, effective measures to prevent
| risks to health and safety of passengers (and other persons at
| the station) during passenger surges and overcrowding events at
| London Euston Station" and the remedy demanded is that the
| station needs to do a risk assessment and then implement whatever
| measures they come up with in the risk assessment.
|
| My _best guess_ at what this is all about, possibly completely
| wrong, is as follows:
|
| * the two "pinch points" are two of the ramps, probably the one
| leading down to platforms 8/9/10/11 and the one leading down to
| platforms 12/13/14/15, which in my personal experience of the
| station are where most of the big surges happen
|
| * the injuries happened due to crowds running down the ramps to
| the platforms once the platform number for their train got
| announced, either to beat other passengers to the seats or out of
| fear that they would not get on a late-arriving train before it
| departed at all
|
| * the risk assessment concluded that the station should put up
| signs telling people not to run, and then they did that (I can't
| find any reporting about it, but if my memory serves me right,
| then those signs on the ramps at Euston appeared late last year
| which fits with the timeline)
|
| So, IF I'm guessing correctly, there's probably a real stampede
| risk, with minor examples having already played out, but it's
| totally unrelated to the number of trains or the crowding in the
| lobby, the fired "whistleblower" is basically full of shit for
| suggesting a problem stemming from a larger number of trains, and
| the supposed "fix" is also meaningless compliance bullshit that
| will have no effect.
|
| Of course, again, I could be guessing totally wrong; there isn't
| enough detail in the public documents or reporting for us to
| tell. So I publicly asked Gareth, the guy who got fired, to
| explain his concerns in more detail or point me to somewhere with
| detail. He... responded with indignation and contempt, pointed me
| to the Improvement Notice for one reason (the document with no
| detail about the problems, just a one sentence description that
| is probably copied and pasted boilerplate and makes no reference
| to any of the specific circumstances at Euston), then suggested I
| was mentally unwell in some way and blocked me. What a dickhead.
| Here's the end of the thread; I'd be grateful if someone not
| blocked by Gareth would stick it into Threadreader and post a
| link here so people not on X can read it:
| https://x.com/GarethDennis/status/1829179489043226778
|
| I find it hard to fathom why someone sincerely concerned with
| safety would behave in this way - making unactionably vague
| complaints that a station is unsafe, then refusing to elaborate
| and lashing out at anyone interested in the detail for daring to
| question him. After the displeasure of interacting with the guy,
| it seems to me that this story has no heroes. But still, no
| matter how much of a dick he is or how useless his criticism was,
| it doesn't justify the firing. If you want a culture in which
| people feel safe speaking up about concerns, you have to indulge
| even stupid and incoherent concerns made by dicks; if you don't,
| everybody with something substantive to say will quite reasonably
| fear they will be viewed and treated in the same way you treated
| the dick.
| penguin_booze wrote:
| I'm surprised (or should I?) that this wasn't picked up by the
| BBC - at least didn't show up on my feeds.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| As a general rule, don't talk to the media -- there's little
| upside and a lot of potential downside.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| the UK is being ran with the same level of incompetence as Boeing
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