Northern are pretty clearly telling you not to do this.
It’s perfectly clear to most people what Northern are trying to say.
Does beg the privacy question of, "Well, don't look at my device then!"
Oh come off it. So you’d sit on a train, with hard core porn playing on your device, and if a child saw it your response to their parents would be: “they shouldn’t have looked at my device?”
If you’re in a public space you have *no* expectation of privacy, and you cannot act as you would in the privacy of your own lounge/bedroom.
So Northern block all porn sites on their wifi. I can just use cellular data via my phone, pre download material to my iPad or whatever or do it the old fashioned way and take a copy of Hustler or Readers Wives with me. Either that or play the uncut DVD of ‘9 Songs’ or ‘Blackeyes’ starring Gina Bellman on my laptop.
I’m afraid obtuse responses like this prove exactly why this kind of press release is increasingly necessary.
If it's a genuine problem they're trying to address, they would be better off having posters at stations and on trains, and encouraging guards to make relevant on-train announcements. You don't get press releases touting "see it, say it, sorted" or 61016, do you? It's that sort of issue.
Well perhaps they will need to do so in future if it continues to be a problem. The first step is raising awareness - as I say, there are posters that deal with this sort of thing on TfL. I’d rather they weren’t there, but clearly there is a problem that needs addressing.
It doesn't, but it has a bearing on whether the public see Northern (and the wider railway) as professional, and whether they see them as owning their failures and committing to fix them. The public impression of the railways is that nobody cares - a proper apology and some humility, rather than lecturing the 99% who wouldn't dream of doing this sort of stuff, would go a long way.
So you think the Northern “PR department” shouldn’t do anything but endlessly apologise for poor service (much of which is no doubt down to the DfT). If you look at their news feed there are articles about electrification, using economists to assess travel patterns, a guard that helped find some missing children etc. this is par for the course for most modern businesses. You’ve conceded that putting out that kind of information (or not) has no bearing whatsoever on improving the service, so I’m not sure how you can argue this is evidence of misplaced priorities.
As for lecturing people, the reality is that 99% of passengers wouldn’t dream of sexually harassing someone on their way to work, yet Northern have a section of their website telling people this isn’t acceptable and to report it if they see it. Would you suggest that should be removed? I can’t see how this is much different!
I don't understand why Northern aren't just straight up saying "don't watch or consume pornography on board our trains". It removes any ambiguity. Things like John Wick aren't suitable for children (people's brains are visibly sprayed everywhere in all 4 films) but it'd be ridiculous to say that watching it on board a train isn't allowed. Some of Northern's routes are long enough to watch a film on them (York - Blackpool, Manchester Airport - Barrow/Windermere, Leeds - Carlisle), so banning films would be silly. Having said that, I wouldn't advise watching A Clockwork Orange in a public space.
Because it isn’t just pornography. It’s certain videos on Tiktok, sketches with offensive jokes, violent films being played loudly. The point they’re making is be aware of who is around you and, if you’re in any doubt as to what is acceptable, behave as you would at work.
Not difficult to understand, you would surely think!
Some of the mental gymnastics are absurd. I particularly like how some seem to think Northern's PR team should get a hi-viz on and go and drive some trains. The fact it needs saying at all is what we should all be losing our minds over!
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