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I would argue that there is absolutely no reason for fare evasion to be a criminal matter, unless there's actual fraud involved. For instance, jumping the barriers or tailgating is an obvious fraud, but the act of getting on a train without a ticket is not fraud in itself. I saw a situation on...

One thing that is still common on some of the more wrecked EN57 EMUs belonging to PolRegio is that the doors will simply be jammed open in summer.

I have to admit to finding the fencing of railway lines to be absolutely overkill in the UK, along with the provision of full blown level crossings where a simple stop sign would suffice. More of a cultural issue too, I think. Germany in particular has a very strong "it's your responsibility"...

It's not normal in Schengen for them to work that way, so it must be a peculiarity of Portugal. There is a possibility that the border controls there were only carried out visually, as cruise ship passengers would be very low risk, and hence the manual checks were required to confirm that they...

Yes, I worked briefly in Luxembourg on a project, and it was quite stunning how capable the native Luxembourgers were in languages. Knowing all four of those to a professional level was the norm, and a couple of people had also learnt Dutch to a decent working standard. In comparison, the French...

I'd recommend getting in touch with this guy: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/matt-wilson-27672020 He says on his own LinkedIn that he is "proudly neurodivergent" and he's the responsible person at Northern Rail for accessible travel issues.

A friend used to run an LGBT club that essentially didn't bother closing at the weekend. Officially, it was open till 3am and then open again from 7am, but in practice, it simply didn't shut between 7am Friday until 11pm on Sunday. It was tolerated by the licencing board and the police for...

I do it pretty much all the time in the UK. No issues at all.

I've witnessed a very interesting situation in a Wallonia supermarket, not far away from the border with Flanders. The Flemish guys in the supermarket were buying beer, and the Wallonian cashier had some problems with their credit card. They couldn't communicate with each other, as they didn't...

From a risk/reward point of view, there's little sense in companies proceeding to prosecution if they're able to agree an out of court settlement, even if the person has given false details. There is always a risk with court proceedings that the defendant can put together a credible and viable...

It's a stupid question, but why can they only fuel 18 with a single pump?

So, they have two real options: either take your word for it, or they can ask the police to attend so that they can confirm your identity, although they have no power of detention and the police are very unlikely to show up in this circumstance. I wouldn't agree, for the sole reason that I'm...

To answer the question properly: Nothing. They have no way of verifying an individual's actual address, so if it doesn't show up on whatever database they choose to query, there's nothing they can realistically do. They could ask for the police to attend, but it's very unlikely that they're...

Yes, exactly as explained above. I don't think it's an ideal arrangement, but the sheer size of the Ulysses means that they can easily accommodate the crew needed.

Yes, this is probably why the Swift will remain for a while. The higher fuel costs are outweighed by the low crewing requirements combined with a rather unorthodox approach to accommodating them at night, and tourist traffic generally wants to be on and off as quickly as possible. One problem...

The Oscar Wilde (ex-Tallink Star) is certainly capable of it, as it did the 80km Tallinn-Helsinki in around 2 hours, so 3 hours for Holyhead-Dublin is well within her capabilities. I'd expect them to match the Ulysses sailing time for marketing purposes however, as well as keeping people...

Airports are far less of an issue, because carriers will be obliged to check whether someone has the ETIAS before travelling. It's likely that the check will be integrated into online check-in systems, meaning that travellers simply won't get a boarding pass if they require the ETIAS and they...

Airports aren't the issue, but land border crossings. ETIAS and the EES present huge challenges, because the existing border crossing infrastructure cannot cope with systematic scanning of every document.

Was it not the case during Operation Banner that the Army sometimes carried out arrest operations? I know police primacy was the usual goal in Northern Ireland, but for instance, Operation Demetrius was definitely not carried out with RUC support.

I can confirm. I know a case first hand where railway employees in a rural part of Hungary were all but ordered to hand over part of their salaries to a local political slush fund. There are very few good jobs in the area, so if you want to keep your job, you need to make sure that you...