UK: Rail inspectors don't know how to handle fare-dodgers

[John Ashworth]

Rail inspectors don't know how to handle fare-dodgers

A 'Big Man' chucked a teenager off a ScotRail train, but perhaps the real problem was the ticket inspector.

The Telegraph
By Bryony Gordon8:49PM GMT 14 Dec 2011

What to make of YouTube’s latest sensation, the “big man”, aka Alan Pollock, a passenger last Friday on the ScotRail service from Edinburgh to Perth? There he was, not minding his own business, as a ticket inspector remonstrated with a 19-year-old student who did not appear to have a ticket. Enter Mr Pollock, who picked up Sam Main by the scruff of his neck and pushed him on to the platform. “Cheers, big man,” said one man, to applause from the carriage.

The video has been viewed almost a million times but the “star” of the show, the big man, now faces a possible assault charge. The boy claims he suffered cuts and bruises – he is but a poor innocent diabetic who had been sold two tickets in the same direction by mistake. Boo hoo, smirk many. Let us play the smallest violin in the world. Their sympathies lie with Alan Pollock – for it is he who is now likely to end up in court, not the teenager who effed and blinded and refused to abide by the rules of the railway.

But by pitching the vigilante against the fare-dodger, I feel we are ignoring the real problem: the ticket inspector. Mr Main may have uttered a few expletives, but he was hardly violent, so why did the railway worker insist on the extreme action of not moving the train, to the detriment of everybody else on it? Why didn’t he extract the boy’s address, or get officials to meet them at the other end? Why did a member of the public have to get involved at all, potentially turning an unpaid £5.10 ticket into a costly assault trial?

It’s down to the ridiculous travel regulations printed in tiny letters on the back of your ticket, which make it invalid on wet and windy Thursdays and the first and last Saturday of the month. The complete inflexibility of railway companies has sucked all common sense out of the people who staff trains.

A friend of mine was once met off his train at Euston by several police officers. His crime? To walk through the carriages during the journey from Manchester to London, trying to raise £155 for the weeping elderly woman next to him who had been told by the officious inspector that her ticket was only valid on the train before and she would have to buy a new one. The inspector had called ahead to the police at Euston because Tom was “begging”.

[John Ashworth]

Train incident: ‘Big man’ charged with assault

Scotsman
Published on Wednesday 21 December 2011 14:20

A man who removed a teenager from a train in an incident which later became an internet hit has been charged by police with assault, it has been confirmed.

The alleged incident, which received more than a million views on YouTube after it was filmed by a passenger on his mobile phone, happened at Linlithgow station on ScotRail’s Edinburgh Waverley to Perth service on Friday December 9.

It shows a passenger, Sam Main, 19, speaking to a conductor over an alleged unpaid fare, before he was removed from the train by another passenger, who has been dubbed the ‘big man’.

Alan Pollock, 35, from Stirling, was named locally as the man who allegedly stepped in and removed Mr Main from the train.

British Transport Police today announced that Mr Pollock faces an assault charge.

Mr Main has not been charged, but both men have been reported to the procurator fiscal.

A spokesman said: “British Transport Police can now confirm that a 35-year-old man from Stirling and a 19-year-old man from Falkirk are the subject of a report to the local procurator fiscal in connection with an incident on board the 9.33pm Edinburgh Waverley to Perth service, at Linlithgow on Friday December 9 2011.”

A Crown Office spokesman said: “The procurator fiscal at Livingston has received reports concerning two males in connection with an incident in Linlithgow on Friday December 9 2011.

“The reports remain under consideration by the procurator fiscal.”