Thanks but if I am to take advice from anyone , it certainly shall not be from you.
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Southern Rail STRIKE details
- Thread starter Ernest
- Start date
Thanks but if I am to take advice from anyone , it certainly shall not be from you.
Are the strikes next week going ahead?
And, more specifically, will rush hour-ish services from the Worthing area to London be amongst those that still run largely OK?
And, more specifically, will rush hour-ish services from the Worthing area to London be amongst those that still run largely OK?
pearl
Well-known member
what strikes? nothing on Southern site
elninobonito
Whitehawk Born and Bred
- May 27, 2011
- 652
No, think the driver strike has been canned, thats what the southern website says anyway
Thanks. As they don't normally affect me, I don't follow it that closely.
I merely went here: http://www.southernrailway.com/southern/news/
Where the fourth item down is: http://www.southernrailway.com/southern/news/gtr-response-to-aslef-strike-dates/
Thunder Bolt
Silly old bat
If there was no guard and no one else around and this happened the chances of the driver seeing this happen on one of the 12 crappy cameras are next to zero. Lucky for this gentleman there were people around.
Thunder Bolt
Silly old bat
Yes, that was the point. There were no staff on the platform, and no guard. Fortunately the passengers alerted the driver. This happened 16 months ago but no publicity about it? I know it's SE Rail, but it's a serious incident.
Very much so - first I heard about it was a week or so ago. He's a very lucky chap and the driver has the other passengers to thank for avoiding a possible fatality and all that that entails. Thanks for posting.
middletoenail
Well-known member
Whilst back in the UK recently, one thing did notice was the gap between the train and the platforms. They seem much bigger than what I'm use to in Asia. Have trains become narrower in UK, or have they always been like that?
Sent from my SM-G9350 using Tapatalk
Sent from my SM-G9350 using Tapatalk
Thunder Bolt
Silly old bat
Here's another one from East Midlands.
https://twitter.com/mrstevegribbin/status/892728839176114177
[tweet]892728839176114177[/tweet]
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/lond...agged-along-platform-by-a-train-a3601896.html
Driver on trial.
Will be a lot more of these type of cases in the years to come.
Much cheaper to blame the driver rather than admit it's safer with a guard.
Driver on trial.
Will be a lot more of these type of cases in the years to come.
Much cheaper to blame the driver rather than admit it's safer with a guard.
Thunder Bolt
Silly old bat
They were called conductors and you didn't have unruly kids then, as they got slung off.
Thunder Bolt
Silly old bat
I wonder why?
https://twitter.com/ABCommuters/status/893099989756411905
[tweet]893099989756411905[/tweet]
https://twitter.com/ABCommuters/status/893099989756411905
[tweet]893099989756411905[/tweet]
https://medium.com/association-of-b...be-the-best-17k-we-ve-ever-spent-a9dffde43b80
ABC has now paid the DfT’s legal costs. Will this turn out to be the best £17K we’ve ever spent?
A personal reflection on a year spent battling Chris Grayling through the courts — how does ABC’s experience fit into the legacy he left at the Ministry of Justice?
Photography by Chris Beckett: Fight for Legal Aid protest, 2014
Five days after the Department for Transport’s deadline for court costs, we were able to pay the £17,000 bill in full. As the main witness in ABC’s court action against the DfT, I strongly believed that we should treat the payment of this bill as a priority — and it now seems important to explain why. To do so is going to require a detour through the career history of a certain Transport Minister.
Our legal victory has unfolded in stages over the past month, and is much more complex than the DfT suggests in its repeated attempts to claim that our case was “thrown out of court”. The Judge’s ruling was in fact a conditional one — commanding Chris Grayling to immediately enact his own franchise enforcement policy on Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) or be subject to judicial review.
ABC was hit with costs because the DfT satisfied the Judge’s demands in time; evading the judicial review by imposing a £13.4 million “fine” on Govia. Andy McDonald summed it up perfectly when he said: “The Secretary of State should not have to be dragged kicking and screaming by the high court to do the job he has already been appointed to do.”
It’s one of two unfortunate events last month for the former Justice Minister’s now quite extensive legal biography. UNISON’s victory at the Supreme Court on 26th July resulted in the government reversing unlawful employment tribunal charges that have caused applications to nosedive by 79% since 2013. The public service union is claiming this as “the most significant judicial intervention in the history of British employment law” — and I think they deserve the accolade.
UNISON’s victory is significant and not only for being the eighth of the former Justice Minister’s policies overturned by judicial review or later abandoned by the Ministry. The policy was supposed to discourage “spurious and frivolous claims” — a notion now utterly debunked by the massive drop in applications, and disproportionate impact on women, minorities, and lower earners.
The changes to tribunal fees enacted in 2013 represent much more than a failure of professed ‘economic’ policy — as “hardworking taxpayers” now repaying £27m in unlawful tribunal fees will realise. In my view, the very suggestion that the weakest in society would put themselves through the stress, upheaval and utter exhaustion of a legal challenge for spurious and frivolous reasons is actually more of an insult to human decency.
During his time as Justice Minister, Chris Grayling also tried his utmost to limit the public’s access to judicial review; seemingly part of his preoccupation with an imagined conspiracy of “left wing activists”. His fear-mongering in this area was, as ever, done for the sake of the “hard-working tax payer” against “professional activists” and “pressure group lobbyists” who are out to thwart the “true global race” of economic progress.
So, who are these “spurious and frivolous” people undertaking tribunal challenges, judicial reviews and the like? Having been through the experience from beginning to end, I can’t fathom the idea that anyone would put themselves through it with an attitude of “frivolity” or mere “trouble-making”. There are far, far easier ways to make trouble than to put yourself through an all-consuming legal case (although I’m proud to say that ABC has got this far by specialising in both).
When we publish statements from ABC, we are not just using PR-speak when we say this is a David vs. Goliath battle — it really is; in every single sense of the analogy. This relates to an area where Chris Grayling has actually hit the nail on the head — though not for the reasons he thinks. Yes, there will be “single-issue campaigns” around judicial reviews; and yes, there will be “pressure group lobbyists” involved — if by “pressure group lobbyists” he means: those who turn their communication skills to the righting of an injustice. What else can we — as members of the public - do when we undertake a major legal action without any resources? ABC’s court case was totally grassroots and we came to the table with nothing — a single tool was available to us, and that was social media.
The route to judicial review is already difficult to access and it’s unthinkable that members of the public could possibly afford to do so without crowdfunding through the only resources available to them: online activism, public protests and digital strategy. According to this definition, one becomes an “activist” the moment they take up the endeavour — and so we are lost in yet another non sequitur of Grayling’s making.
Anyone feeling as angered as I do by the Minister’s repeated assaults on justice and decency might take solace in the words of Lord Pannick QC, who shot the then Lord Chancellor down in flames in 2015:
“However inconvenient and embarrassing it is to Mr Grayling to have his decisions repeatedly ruled to be unlawful by our courts, however much he may resent the delays and costs of government illegality being exposed in court and however much he may prefer to focus on the identity of the claimant rather than the substance of their legal complaint, it remains the vital role of judicial review in this country to hold ministers and civil servants to account in public, not for the merits of their decisions but for their compliance with the law of the land.”
Since Chris Grayling became Transport Minister, the Department for Transport has argued through various channels — most significantly in its argument against our judicial review — that ABC does not have the “standing” to be taken seriously as a passenger campaign. Their QC even claimed at the hearing that the contract between the Govia and the DfT was “none of the business of the public”. It’s hard to put words to our sense of vindication on the day upon hearing the Judge dismiss the DfT’s argument against ABC’s “standing” with barely a moment’s hesitation.
The Judge’s unhesitating decision on our standing - in addition to the precedents he set for public law duty on franchise agreements - rightfully pave the way for passengers to hold back other violations of their rights whenever it becomes necessary.
With Govia’s £13.4 million fine now being reinvested into Southern Rail, we all know there is still a long way to go before we achieve the transparency we are looking for from the DfT. But, we still have to recognise this as a major victory for every one of the 2,000 people who backed our court case — not least because it will have a knock-on effect for others like us; who seek to challenge a government department on their relationship with a private contractor.
Through all of this, it has become clear to me that the echoes of Grayling’s time at the Ministry of Justice still reverberate strongly in the legal profession. There seems to be a great nervousness about the need to appear totally ‘apolitical’ and avoid ‘controversy’ — hardly possible for members of the public who are also trying to run a campaign to fund, and fight for justice. If ABC’s ruling has achieved anything, therefore, I hope it is the following:
Campaigners seeking to right a wrong that has invaded their lives — who are involved in a fight they did not start — should never feel shamed/smeared into ‘playing it safe’ or by the suggestion that they do not appear ‘respectable’ enough. Platforms like Crowd Justice are a tool for a new age of participatory democracy that those of Chris Grayling’s mindset need to face up to: when 2,000 people are behind a legal action of this scale, we become ‘representative’ by our sheer existence.
In transport campaigning, what are the alternatives? It should be noted that ABC are the only people to get this close to a judicial review of the DfT; and the only organisation outside the rail industry to ever have so much as threatened such an action. The closest anybody had come prior to our case was Virgin’s challenge over the West Coast franchise award to First Group in 2012, from which the DfT quickly withdrew and agreed to re-run the competition; suspending three senior civil servants in the process.
There was no other transport campaign independent or ready enough to take up this necessary legal action on Southern Rail —and this was the gulf of representation that we stepped into when founding our non-profit. Because we are totally reliant on crowd-funding, it has been hard for us to come to terms with the fact that we have had to hand over £17,000 — money that could have kept us going for years — to a government department that has been the cause of so much misery to our donors.
But, the bigger picture is more important. We could never have evaded these costs, no matter who had stood up and argued for it — and in bankrupting ABC as a non-profit we would have lost a high-profile transport campaign; now widely recognised for its supportive grassroots network, cutting-edge analysis and fearless reputation. We would also have sacrificed our standing in any future legal actions of this nature; a need that is still urgent for disabled people facing the withdrawal of guaranteed access on Southern Rail. Having finally proven our ‘respectability’; we would immediately have lost it.
We are now in a unique position to expand ABC across the UK as the boldest and most effective transport campaign yet. In doing so, we need to promote our values of “controversy with courtesy” — remaining unafraid (and unashamed) to break taboos in a rail industry that has been allowed to remain complacent for far too long.
The £17,000 we’ve paid in legal costs purchases ABC’s freedom, independence and continued existence — allowing us to look the DfT straight in the eye and continue even more boldly than before. For consolation, I think we can take our cue from Chris Grayling’s own paranoia and say: yes, we have created a high-profile pressure group as a result of our legal action— and now we’re going to campaign for accountability harder than you ever imagined.
ABC still needs to pay its own legal bill and raise extra funds to retain legal advice; which is an essential support to our investigative work, as well as our pursuit of further avenues for rail justice. If you’re able to, please donate and help us reach £30K by 16th August!
ABC has now paid the DfT’s legal costs. Will this turn out to be the best £17K we’ve ever spent?
A personal reflection on a year spent battling Chris Grayling through the courts — how does ABC’s experience fit into the legacy he left at the Ministry of Justice?
Photography by Chris Beckett: Fight for Legal Aid protest, 2014
Five days after the Department for Transport’s deadline for court costs, we were able to pay the £17,000 bill in full. As the main witness in ABC’s court action against the DfT, I strongly believed that we should treat the payment of this bill as a priority — and it now seems important to explain why. To do so is going to require a detour through the career history of a certain Transport Minister.
Our legal victory has unfolded in stages over the past month, and is much more complex than the DfT suggests in its repeated attempts to claim that our case was “thrown out of court”. The Judge’s ruling was in fact a conditional one — commanding Chris Grayling to immediately enact his own franchise enforcement policy on Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) or be subject to judicial review.
ABC was hit with costs because the DfT satisfied the Judge’s demands in time; evading the judicial review by imposing a £13.4 million “fine” on Govia. Andy McDonald summed it up perfectly when he said: “The Secretary of State should not have to be dragged kicking and screaming by the high court to do the job he has already been appointed to do.”
It’s one of two unfortunate events last month for the former Justice Minister’s now quite extensive legal biography. UNISON’s victory at the Supreme Court on 26th July resulted in the government reversing unlawful employment tribunal charges that have caused applications to nosedive by 79% since 2013. The public service union is claiming this as “the most significant judicial intervention in the history of British employment law” — and I think they deserve the accolade.
UNISON’s victory is significant and not only for being the eighth of the former Justice Minister’s policies overturned by judicial review or later abandoned by the Ministry. The policy was supposed to discourage “spurious and frivolous claims” — a notion now utterly debunked by the massive drop in applications, and disproportionate impact on women, minorities, and lower earners.
The changes to tribunal fees enacted in 2013 represent much more than a failure of professed ‘economic’ policy — as “hardworking taxpayers” now repaying £27m in unlawful tribunal fees will realise. In my view, the very suggestion that the weakest in society would put themselves through the stress, upheaval and utter exhaustion of a legal challenge for spurious and frivolous reasons is actually more of an insult to human decency.
During his time as Justice Minister, Chris Grayling also tried his utmost to limit the public’s access to judicial review; seemingly part of his preoccupation with an imagined conspiracy of “left wing activists”. His fear-mongering in this area was, as ever, done for the sake of the “hard-working tax payer” against “professional activists” and “pressure group lobbyists” who are out to thwart the “true global race” of economic progress.
So, who are these “spurious and frivolous” people undertaking tribunal challenges, judicial reviews and the like? Having been through the experience from beginning to end, I can’t fathom the idea that anyone would put themselves through it with an attitude of “frivolity” or mere “trouble-making”. There are far, far easier ways to make trouble than to put yourself through an all-consuming legal case (although I’m proud to say that ABC has got this far by specialising in both).
When we publish statements from ABC, we are not just using PR-speak when we say this is a David vs. Goliath battle — it really is; in every single sense of the analogy. This relates to an area where Chris Grayling has actually hit the nail on the head — though not for the reasons he thinks. Yes, there will be “single-issue campaigns” around judicial reviews; and yes, there will be “pressure group lobbyists” involved — if by “pressure group lobbyists” he means: those who turn their communication skills to the righting of an injustice. What else can we — as members of the public - do when we undertake a major legal action without any resources? ABC’s court case was totally grassroots and we came to the table with nothing — a single tool was available to us, and that was social media.
The route to judicial review is already difficult to access and it’s unthinkable that members of the public could possibly afford to do so without crowdfunding through the only resources available to them: online activism, public protests and digital strategy. According to this definition, one becomes an “activist” the moment they take up the endeavour — and so we are lost in yet another non sequitur of Grayling’s making.
Anyone feeling as angered as I do by the Minister’s repeated assaults on justice and decency might take solace in the words of Lord Pannick QC, who shot the then Lord Chancellor down in flames in 2015:
“However inconvenient and embarrassing it is to Mr Grayling to have his decisions repeatedly ruled to be unlawful by our courts, however much he may resent the delays and costs of government illegality being exposed in court and however much he may prefer to focus on the identity of the claimant rather than the substance of their legal complaint, it remains the vital role of judicial review in this country to hold ministers and civil servants to account in public, not for the merits of their decisions but for their compliance with the law of the land.”
Since Chris Grayling became Transport Minister, the Department for Transport has argued through various channels — most significantly in its argument against our judicial review — that ABC does not have the “standing” to be taken seriously as a passenger campaign. Their QC even claimed at the hearing that the contract between the Govia and the DfT was “none of the business of the public”. It’s hard to put words to our sense of vindication on the day upon hearing the Judge dismiss the DfT’s argument against ABC’s “standing” with barely a moment’s hesitation.
The Judge’s unhesitating decision on our standing - in addition to the precedents he set for public law duty on franchise agreements - rightfully pave the way for passengers to hold back other violations of their rights whenever it becomes necessary.
With Govia’s £13.4 million fine now being reinvested into Southern Rail, we all know there is still a long way to go before we achieve the transparency we are looking for from the DfT. But, we still have to recognise this as a major victory for every one of the 2,000 people who backed our court case — not least because it will have a knock-on effect for others like us; who seek to challenge a government department on their relationship with a private contractor.
Through all of this, it has become clear to me that the echoes of Grayling’s time at the Ministry of Justice still reverberate strongly in the legal profession. There seems to be a great nervousness about the need to appear totally ‘apolitical’ and avoid ‘controversy’ — hardly possible for members of the public who are also trying to run a campaign to fund, and fight for justice. If ABC’s ruling has achieved anything, therefore, I hope it is the following:
Campaigners seeking to right a wrong that has invaded their lives — who are involved in a fight they did not start — should never feel shamed/smeared into ‘playing it safe’ or by the suggestion that they do not appear ‘respectable’ enough. Platforms like Crowd Justice are a tool for a new age of participatory democracy that those of Chris Grayling’s mindset need to face up to: when 2,000 people are behind a legal action of this scale, we become ‘representative’ by our sheer existence.
In transport campaigning, what are the alternatives? It should be noted that ABC are the only people to get this close to a judicial review of the DfT; and the only organisation outside the rail industry to ever have so much as threatened such an action. The closest anybody had come prior to our case was Virgin’s challenge over the West Coast franchise award to First Group in 2012, from which the DfT quickly withdrew and agreed to re-run the competition; suspending three senior civil servants in the process.
There was no other transport campaign independent or ready enough to take up this necessary legal action on Southern Rail —and this was the gulf of representation that we stepped into when founding our non-profit. Because we are totally reliant on crowd-funding, it has been hard for us to come to terms with the fact that we have had to hand over £17,000 — money that could have kept us going for years — to a government department that has been the cause of so much misery to our donors.
But, the bigger picture is more important. We could never have evaded these costs, no matter who had stood up and argued for it — and in bankrupting ABC as a non-profit we would have lost a high-profile transport campaign; now widely recognised for its supportive grassroots network, cutting-edge analysis and fearless reputation. We would also have sacrificed our standing in any future legal actions of this nature; a need that is still urgent for disabled people facing the withdrawal of guaranteed access on Southern Rail. Having finally proven our ‘respectability’; we would immediately have lost it.
We are now in a unique position to expand ABC across the UK as the boldest and most effective transport campaign yet. In doing so, we need to promote our values of “controversy with courtesy” — remaining unafraid (and unashamed) to break taboos in a rail industry that has been allowed to remain complacent for far too long.
The £17,000 we’ve paid in legal costs purchases ABC’s freedom, independence and continued existence — allowing us to look the DfT straight in the eye and continue even more boldly than before. For consolation, I think we can take our cue from Chris Grayling’s own paranoia and say: yes, we have created a high-profile pressure group as a result of our legal action— and now we’re going to campaign for accountability harder than you ever imagined.
ABC still needs to pay its own legal bill and raise extra funds to retain legal advice; which is an essential support to our investigative work, as well as our pursuit of further avenues for rail justice. If you’re able to, please donate and help us reach £30K by 16th August!
samtheseagull
Well-known member
- Sep 15, 2010
- 1,601
Anyone found a decent deal for the trains up to Watford? Cant find a return for any less than £27 .