Gareth Marston
Established Member
Therin lies the whole issue with ticket checking and revenue protection on the railways in it's entirety. Utterly incompetent staff with inadiquate trainging AND testing.
Under BR revenue protection staff where paid high rate of pay to attract the correct people for the job and given a two week training course to learn the bye laws and rules and regulations regarding ticketing on the railways.Consitant across the entire network.
Now we have a situation where agency staff are used on minimum wage some of whom where working through the agency in a wearhouse or factory the week before they started checking tickets.
Also the Attitued test should not be an issue. A good RPI will resist his own feelings about an individual and how he is being spoken to and will stick to the facts and legal reqirements of the situation whilst keeping a realistic approach to the complications of the ticketing situation on the railways.
Someone from an agency that is working through an agency for a reason is highly unlikely to do that.
It is not realised by managemnet that revenue protection on the railways IS a very skilled job and requires bright,intelligent people who should be tested and passed out before thay are allowed to take up the job.
You have no way of of proving this was the case here apart from the OP's story which as I and several others have pointed out is clearly not the whole story due to various disconnects in description of events versus infrastructure of ticket purchasing facilities / standard procedure when staff call for BTP assistance etc.
Short of cctv/body cam evidence from somewhere we may never know what the whole truth is here.
Looking at the OP's post, Northern's Revenue Protection policy and where the OPs son travelled to Piccadily from its entirely reasonable for the Revenue staff to take an interest in someone who has arrived ticketless potentially past 5 or 6 opportunities to buy. Its what happened next with his interaction with staff is the key. As I posted before how did he go from "please can i have a ticket" to "being arrested". I'm 100% certain its not because staff "felt like it" and BTP thought "oh go on then were not doing anything else"
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