A \’Big Man\’ chucked a teenager off a ScotRail train, but perhaps the real problem was the ticket inspector.
It\’s the train company\’s fault, petty bureaucracy gone mad.
The \’big man\’, the fare-dodger and the right time to intervene
Intervening is community in action except when it\’s vigilantes.
Still, I know the problem. Something\’s in the news and you\’ve space to fill. As long as you can add a twist (and a couple of personal stories, as both do) that\’ll be fine. Doesn\’t actually matter much what you fill the space with, as long as that white gap between the ads gets covered in print she\’ll be fine.
This columnist business isn\’t quite as glamorous as some seem to think….
“It’s the train company’s fault, petty bureaucracy gone mad.”
Perhaps CiF should withold payment for Bryony’s column, see if that gets some sense through her thick head?
And I see Bindel upholds the ‘Guardian’s’ reputation by referring to the incident as one of ‘fair dodging’…
The Times got into a bit of trouble of few years ago when some bright young thing on a graduate trainee scheme wrote a column about how easy it was to dodge fares and that it was a Good Thing to do. Oh contraire replied the colonels in their numbers.
Did no-one refer to Cherie Blair’s fare-dodging?
In http://news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/16130075 the student says: “I can’t understand why a grown man would attack a young boy from behind and assault him and throw him off a train,”
Sam Main is 19. He still apparently thinks of himself as a “young boy” not a “grown man”, or alternatively a “young man”.
I and a couple of friends got put on the wrong train by a dim-witted ticket office wallah in Cambridge, bound for oop North. Ticket inspector tells us we have to purchase new tickets as ours are not valid on that route. No dice, sez we, here’s our names and addresses, send us a letter and we’ll see. We binned unopened all three of the letters we were sent and heard no more. Since we a) had right on our side b) sounded posh c) never raised our voices or swore at the inspector and d) were not willing to be pushed around by some jobsworth nebbish the situation was resolved to our satisfaction. If Student Grant had followed our example he’d have been OK. As it was, he was a bolshie prat and got what he deserved.