Whilst your stance suggests I will not be able to get you to believe me, you could not be further from the truth with your last statement. Controllers tend to have a lot more to manage in their day to day role than PPM. I am not going to state it has no impact, but the simple maths tells you to get PPM better you need to cancel, run fast, terminate short or start short to get the service back to what people want, on time trains. That's almost certainly 2 x PPM failures to get a stock diagram back and if the crew don't stay with stock (very frequent) that's another potential failure or two. What is happening during recovery is the controller is putting all his / her eggs back where they belong in the basket, because sure as eggs is eggs, if a Down train is left to "run out" it's lateness (PPM failure without lifting a finger) and come back late (PPM failure without lifting a finger) the chances are the driver on your late train is booked to relieve one in front that's on time. Now you are terminating the train ahead of it short due to no relief and delaying the one behind even more because you sat on your hands worrying about skipping stops to save PPM . . But that's debunked. Had the first or second train been skip stopped there would still have been PPM failures, but trains would have been in the right order for driver relief and tge one that had no relief wouldn't have taken 2 x PPM hits at least to recover.
Controllers juggle customer need, requirement to get the railway back on time to avoid crew and fleet limitations, stakeholder pressure and sometijes trends identified - there are regular locations identified that stop intervention where the make up of the timetable leaves easy wins that get repeated so these get "stopped" and something else has to "give". Yes the result of a poor period of PPM will concentrate some minds, but did you know Network Rail and the TOC are not always measured for the same thing? The GN route is certainly one where this exists. NR are measured far more stringently than the TOC for PPM. That 's another conversation the controller is having.
I am not going to say they get all of that right everytime and I could probably quote a few times when in past roles I have made some poor choices as a controller, but none have ever made with some form of deliberate destruction in mind or an evil grin laughing at people left on platforms. Some come into control roles and when they have a realisation that a split second decision to cancel a train, or skip stops will directly affect hundreds of people, they walk away. It is a hell of a responsibility and it's not one people take lightly.
Controllers do travel on trains, they do get home late because trains run fast or get cancelled or are full and standing. they do have empathy.
