The Private Police State – Part Deux – UPDATED

 July 28th, 2010 › Uncategorized › Sir Olly › 1 comment ›

In one of the many updates in part one of this saga I mentioned a company called The Listening Company, who are the company who Southeastern have outsourced their customer services to. (No you can’t make this crap up). Armed with their email address I sent an email to The Listening Company with a link to Part One of the Private Police State, and quick instructions to find out for themselves how widely this story was being spread (Thanks to all of you who have postd links on Twitter and blogged about it, please keep it up) and explained that I wasn’t happy that I’d not heard from Souteastern, and that by association The Listening Company was bound to be tarred with the same brush.

Not being happy at all with the level of “customer service” I thought I’d try another tactic. Southeastern is owned/operated by GoVia which is a partnership made of of two other companies Go-Ahead and Keolis. Senior members of staff of all three organisations received a similar email to the one I sent to The Listening Company.

Shortly after I sent those emails I finally received an email from TLC, it’s only taken them 4 days…

This from their marketing manager

Dear Sir

Further to receiving your email this morning I would like to assure you that Southeastern has received your communications and will be in touch with you shortly.

Kind Regards

They must have had a good think about it, before they “expedited” my original mail. About 10 minutes later I received this from Southeastern:

Dear Mr Cromwell

Thank you for your website comment received by us on Sunday 25 July. I’m sorry our response has taken a couple of days longer than usual – this is because our system recognised your email as potential ‘junk’. This is likely to be because of the number of hyphens and the word ‘admin’ in your email address. However we do regularly check the ‘junk’ folder to ensure that we don’t overlook any correspondence.

I note your experience on Saturday 24 July and that you feel you were delayed incorrectly by our employees.

You may be interested to know that we have a ‘frequently asked question’ section on our website, which includes a question (number 21) about taking photos at our stations. Here’s the text:

As a general rule members of the public are free to take photos of our trains and the stations we manage and are welcome to do so. If any of our employees are likely to feature in your pictures we’d appreciate you asking for their permission whenever possible.

We ask that photographers only go onto areas that are open to the general public and don’t cause an obstruction to passengers or staff. And ideally we ask that photographers taking more than just a few ’snapshots’ seek permission from us prior to taking photos, however we realise this is not always possible in practice.

We must also stress that flash photography must not to be used as this can be a distraction for train drivers.

Our local station staff occasionally may ask photographers not to take pictures and move to another part of the station or leave the station. We’ll always explain why this is necessary. And if this does happen please understand that our staff have many things to consider including safety and security of all passengers and so will use their judgement in this regard.

Permission should be sought for any photographs taken of our trains and property for publication purposes. Enthusiast photographers can take photographs at stations for private purposes, provided they are not sold except to enthusiast magazines.

Finally along with all operators Southeastern supports the Guidelines for Rail Enthusiasts which help remind enthusiasts of their responsibilities when visiting stations.

These guidelines were written with the help of railway enthusiasts and photographers and I hope demonstrate that we wish to be reasonable and also expect passengers and photographers to behave in a reasonable way too. I’d like to draw your attention to the request we make for Southeastern to give permission for photographs to be published.

I hope you will appreciate that there’s a difference between taking general photographs of trains and stations for personal use and taking pictures of members of staff specifically to be published. Taking photographs of individual staff members may well feel intrusive to the individuals concerned.

A copy of your complaint has been forwarded to the manager responsible for our revenue protection team and they will investigate and take any action necessary.

I note that you request payment for your time on Saturday, but I must say this is something that we will not provide. I’m sorry this will not be the news you hoped to hear.

I trust that this email has answered the points you wanted to raise with us.

Yours sincerely

Lisa McGrath
Southeastern

Please do not reply to this email. We are unable to respond to emails we receive at this address. If you’d like to email us another question or comment please use our email contact webform:

http://www.southeasternrailway.co.uk/about-us/contact-us/

Oh dear…. Where.To.Start?

Lady if by regular you mean you check your “potential junk mail folder” every four days it’s no bloody wonder your customer service seems so damned shoddy.
Call me a cynic, but it’s just too darned coincidental that when I start contacting senior management things all of the sudden get done. I’m a cynic but I’m going to go out on a limb here and call you a flat out liar, see the pretty picture below:

Yes that’s an automated email from yourselves stating my comment has been sent. Very weird that an auto-reply would be set up on a junk folder don’t you say?

I note your experience on Saturday 24 July and that you feel you were delayed incorrectly by our employees.

No I don’t feel I was incorrectly delayed. I was incorrectly delayed. If this is your way of saying you think your staff were justified, you have a whole heap of trouble coming your way.

No I’m not interested in you FAQs simply because I didn’t and won’t be carrying a set of them around with me every time I travel on the train. Could you clarify exactly what you mean by “As a general rule”? Is it a condition of carriage? Is it a byelaw? What?

These guidelines were written with the help of railway enthusiasts and photographers and I hope demonstrate that we wish to be reasonable and also expect passengers and photographers to behave in a reasonable way too. I’d like to draw your attention to the request we make for Southeastern to give permission for photographs to be published.

I’m not a railway enthusiast, nor am I a photographer. I was a passenger. It might come as a surprise to you but even customers have civil liberties and I was acting in a reasonable manner when I refused to delete those pictures. If you’d actually taken the time to read the complaint, and indeed my article you will have noticed that I didn’t actually go to the station to take pictures that would be published, it was a spontaneous reaction to seeing the REOs. It was because of the behaviour of your employees that the pictures got published. If they hadn’t reacted and acted illegally the pictures would never really have been publshed.

Readers I’d like you to note this:

I trust that this email has answered the points you wanted to raise with us.

And then this:

Please do not reply to this email. We are unable to respond to emails we receive at this address.

Yes the email address that this email originated from is indeed not manned (I checked), so Southeasterns customer service policy is this.

Complain
Wait
Wait
Prod the complaint along
Get an unsatisfactory answer where they assume you’ll be happy with what they’ve said, but not give you the means of replying straight back to the person who’s dealing with the complaint if you’re not happy with their reply.
Suggest customers use the online form again.

Jesus wept.

I replied to Lisa by sending an email to the address that’s not manned, advising that I’d be at the Meet the Manager event at Victoria station tomorrow. I hope she got it. If not the senior management got an email anyway.

If all goes according to plan tomorrow not only will I be at the event, I’ll be accompanied by a journalist.

Oh I’m declining your request to ask permission to take pictures of your staff. I’ve never had to ask soldiers, the Queen, bands, celebrities etc for permission to take their photographs so I’m not going to bloody well start now. I’ll be bringing my camera along tomorrow too.

UPDATE 1: So, this morning I went to the “Meet the Manager” event at Victoria station. I almost didn’t make it though. A conspiracy of fools almost made sure I missed the whole thing completely.

Allow me to explain. I arrived at Viccy station a tad late so to save some time I made my way over to the Information desk with the aim of finding out exactly where the event was taking place. After asking the young lass behind the counter I was told the following:

The Meet the Manager event was yesterday. After insisting it was today they agreed.

The Meet the Manager Event is at London Bridge After insisting it wasn’t and the website stated it was today and at Viccy station, they sent someone to check the details. They came back and insisted the event was at London Bridge, and even the website said so.

Not very impressed I decided I’d go outside to have a smoke and ring the long suffering other half to check that I wasn’t going mad. After her ladyship confirmed it still stated the meeting was at Viccy Station I decided that I’d wander around a bit to see if I could find the meeting.

I finally stumbled upon it, and looked for the most formally dressed manager. I explained the situation and about half way through he stopped me and pointe me towards the company’s Revenue and Enforcement Manager. Jackpot!

I approached the manager and informed them I was going to ask a two part question:

Are your staff authorised to insist on a customer deleting pictures? Almost instantaneously came the answer of….. No

I explained I was going to put that answer on record and proceeded in asking: If a customer refuses to delete the pictures are your staff authorised to remove the customer from the train and then detain them until the BTP arrive? Again the answer was in the negative.

She then asked me to relate the story. It was very evident that she had not heard of the incident at all, which indicates their customer services dept are either telling porky pies, or are just bloody incompotent. I then explained the responses I’ve had from customer services and that I was not happy with the fact I couldn’t re-contact them to say I was not happy with the outcome. The manager has kindly given me her direct email address and has assured me she will be investigating the incident.

So, the two plastic plod, who tried intimidating me into giving up one of my civil liberties, you now have an internal investigation and a police investigation pending. Have a nice week!

I’ve also just given an interview to a media outlet and as soon as it’s published I’ll pop the link here.

Just for good measure:

The Private Police State *UPDATED WITH PICTURES*

 July 25th, 2010 › Uncategorized › Sir Olly › 11 comments ›

Bloody typical, I STILL didn’t get a decent shot of the text on the back of the hi-vis vest. Compare how this REO is uniformed to a typical BTP officer below:

Time: 20:48
Place: South Eastern Service Gravesend – Charring Cross
Date: 24 July 2010

Last night I had the “pleasure” of being detained against my will not by the police but by Rail Enforcement Officers who operate on the South Eastern rail services. What did I do wrong? I took a picture of these Rail Enforcement Officers and when they asked me to see and then remove the pictures from my phone I refused. Apologies for the long-winded post below, however it raises some very serious questions.

Here’s the story…

Making my way back from a BBQ yesterday I had the need to use the services of South Eastern Rail from Gravesend. When I arrived at the station I noticed two men in hi-vis vests and wondered whether they were the infamous Rail Enforcement Officers I’d heard stories about:

http://garyallanach.blogspot.com/2010/01/i-was-trying-to-exit-chatham-station.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-479607/Cub-Scout-leader-court-putting-feet-train-seat-just-seconds.html

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/newshome/Musician39s-gig-list-deemed-suspicious.6159440.jp

A quick check on the text on the back of their hi-vis jackets confirmed they were indeed REO’s. I’d never seen them before so thought I’d take a picture in the hope I could possibly write a blog post in the future about them. Little did I know that taking those pictures would trigger a chain of events that would lead to me forcefully being removed from a train, and then detained against my will by two people who had no power or authority to do so.

After taking the pictures of the REOs (note that no one stopped me taking these pictures) on the train platform my train arrived, which I boarded, and I went to go find a seat, I still had my phone in hand and as I sat down if fell from my hand to the floor. To check it was working okay I took a picture of my partner, as I was taking this picture I noticed that the REOs had boarded the train too and were on my carriage.

Opposite us on the other side of the train, as the enforcement officers were walking past another passenger volunteered that he had no ticket to one of the officers. While the passenger and officer were in conversation the other officer walked off, and I wanted to get clearer pictures of the back of the REO who was talking to the passenger so I could get a decent picture of the text on his jacket. He eventually left and a few minutes later his colleague came back down to us and started questioning me as to why I was taking pictures of them. He said he’d noticed me taking pictures on the platform. Here are some of the questions he asked:

Why were you taking pictures of my colleague and I?
At first I explained to him he had no authority to ask me and I was free to take pictures of whatever I wanted within reason. He did not accept the answer so I explained to him that I was a blogger and had heard stories about REOs in the past and I wanted pictures so I could blog about it at a later date.

Can I see those pictures?
Again I replied in the negative and explained to him that not even the police had that authority over me unless they thought I was involved in a crime, so he as a REO hardly had those powers either.

Can you delete those pictures?
Third time’s a charm. I said no again, and explained to him that they had no authority to ask me, nor could they force me to delete the pictures.

While he was asking me these questions his colleague came to join him and he too was asking me similar questions. Each time I told them they had no authority over me, and that I hadn’t committed any crime, nor was I unruly, and I had a perfectly legitimate ticket which entitled me to be on the train. The younger of the two officers explained he had seen me taking pictures of them on the platform and they had the right to see those pictures because of their safety. I refused. The older one then said they did have the authority to do so because of the terrorism act. I asked which terrorism act and why were they enforcing that act if they were not police officers? They informed us they did have those powers.

They began to say I needed their permission to take pictures of them. This is how I answered: Is there cctv on this train or on the platforms on the stations? Their answer was yes. So I told them that they nor their company had my permission to take my pictures at all.

I invited them to stay on the train with me until we got to Charing Cross station where I was more than happy enough to go to the police station so the police could explain to them that I was well within my rights by taking pictures and that they had absolutely no right to ask me to see or remove any pictures from my phone. They refused.

Instead they informed my partner and I that they would be taking us off the train at Dartford where they would meet the British Transport Police who would deal with the situation. I at first refused to go with them stating that they had absolutely no authority to kick me off the train without a legitimate reason. Bear in mind my partner had nothing to do with this incident at all and why they felt she needed to be removed from the train I have no idea. It must be pointed out that we did ask what would happen if we refused. Their answer was they would relay our descriptions to the police and the police would search for us and we would be arrested. I relented not wanting my partner to get too involved and advised them that I would get off the train under protest and that they were forcing me to do something against my will and I would be taking it further.

En route to Dartford Station they radioed the BTP and explained to the operator that I’d been taking pictures of them without their permission and they wanted the pictures taken off my phone. When we arrived at Dartford station we disembarked and they kept us detained on the platform until the BTP arrived. Whilst waiting for the BTP I explained I was perfectly within my rights to take pictures and told them they’d dug a hole for themselves as the very motive for wanting to take pictures of them was because I’d heard stories about them abusing their powers, and rather ironically they’d demonstrated that these stories were indeed true, and I explained to them that I would be blogging about it.

I asked them if I was allowed to smoke on the platform, their answer was of course in the negative, so I asked if I could leave the station to go for a cigarette they said no. I then enquired as to who would be paying for our travel home should we miss our last train and their answer was that I would as if I had deleted the pcitures as they requested I’d still have been on the train. I then asked how long we would have to wait for the police and they radioed in to get an ETA. 25 minutes. I then said I was not prepared to sit and wait for 25 minutes without a cigarette and would be leaving the station to do so and if they wanted to they could stop me. They didn’t, however the younger of the two followed me out and followed me back to the platform. Whilst I was gone the older of the two told my partner they were well within their rights now as I had been threatening by saying they’d dug a hole for themselves.

She relayed this information to me and I explained again that I was a blogger and I also flashed my press card at them. (Yes I have one, although not accredited). Eventually the BTP turned up and I asked to speak to them alone and related the whole story advising them that I knew my rights and that I also knew that they nor the REOs had any right to ask me to delete the pictures. To their credit they agreed, and they advised that they would be letting us get on the next train. I told them that the REOs needed to be educated about what rights they did or didn’t have and they again agreed and actually mentioned that the REOs were well known for being power hungry.

They left us, and went to speak to the REOs and we got on the next train to Charing Cross. In all this time the REOs did not once ask for our train tickets, which is one of their main duties.

So REO A1110SE and REO officer A1093SE you’ll be hearing a lot more from me very soon.

The story above raises some interesting questions.

Why if they had seen me taking pictures initially on the platform did they not ask me then?
Why do they feel they have the right to ask passengers to see photographs and ask for them to be deleted?
Why did they not want to go with me to Charing Cross police station?
Why do they dress in uniform that is very similar to the police? Is it to intimidate people?

Why do they think they have the power to detain anyone?
Since when was it a crime to take pictures?
Since when are the BTP personal body guards for the REO?
How many people who do not know their rights have become victims?

What am I going to do about it?

Write a blog post.
Contact South Eastern asking for all the cctv from last night.
Contact South Eastern and point them towards this blog.
Put the link to this post in as many relevant places as possible. Ongoing
Invoice South Eastern for my time. Time is money and my time costs £300 p/h after 20:47 pm.
Contact Passenger Focus and any other Rail Passenger Help Groups.
Contact the media
Send a link to this post to every single blogger I know and/or read.
Find out whether I have the right to charge the REOs for false imprisonment.

The fact that PRIVATE COMPANIES and their employees think they have the right to carry out actions like this and intimidate customers is very scary indeed.

UPDATE: You’ll have noticed I haven’t posted any pictures. I will do so as soon as I can get them off my non-fancy phone. If you’re a blogger and or a reader of this site you are free to distribute this article as you see fit. Please help me out by posting links to this article any where you can. I am going to be taking this further legally if I can. I’m not in it for financial gain (although I will be charging them for my time), I’m in it because I want to show in a court of law if possible that they are walking over people’s civil liberties and what they are doing or think they can do is illegal.

UPDATE 2: I’ve contacted the BTP asking for access to the CCTV footage, as well as whether I have grounds to lay charges against the REOs. I’ve heard back from them and have been informed that someone will be contacting me shortly.

UPDATE 3: The British Journal of Photography has written a post about the incident.. I also have a phone interview with an online news site tomorrow sometime. I have heard back from Passenger Focus and they’ve also forwarded my complaint to South Eastern. No word from BTP as yet.

UPDATE 4: Have heard from the BTP, they wanted further information. They have also spoken to supervisor of REOs who (surprisingly enough) were not at work today. I will be receiving an update in a few days time and the BTP will advise whether I have “a case”. Not looking too hopeful. In other interesting developments I was in contact with a solicitor today who may have done me a huge favour…That’s developing and will update when I can.

Some one asked me today why I don’t contact my local MP (Siobhain McDonagh). Simple. They only wheel her out at election time and to be honest I’d rather slit my wrists with rusty teaspoons than get her involved. (In addition I haven’t been very kind to her in the past). No chance a Labour MP would help out anyway.

I must add that as yet, the only contact I’ve had from South Eastern is an automated email saying they received my communication. I had prodded them again today by way of an email. Tomorrow I’ll be calling them. Rather hilariously it seems Southeastern outsource their customer services, to a comapny called “The Listening Company”, maybe I need to shout a little louder in order for them to actually hear me?

UPDATE 5: There’s a possibility I’ll be attending this event. on Thursday this week. Why not try and get there and ask some difficult questions of the manager? If you feel as strongly as I do about how a private company thinks it has the authority to detain their customers and attempt to illegally intimidate their customers please feel free to help out by contacting them. Speak your mind. Speech is free.

Send McSnotty His P45

 July 23rd, 2010 › Uncategorized › Sir Olly › Comments Off ›

Of all the campaigns we’ve tried to initiate from YBC we think this could be the most successful one. The politically informed who visit this site will know very well that the (dis)Honourable Member from Kircaldy has hardly gotten out of bed to attend Parliament, in fact he’s been so scarce we are wondering whether his mothership has returned to earth to pick him up.

As taxpayers we demand value for money, and especially now when everyone has to tighten their belts we think it is important to get rid of dead weight. As Taxpayers Ltd we understand that sometimes hard decisions have to be made and as a “company” sometimes we have to “let people go” by way of redundancies. It’s never easy to make someone redundant and many factors contribute to how we come to decisions. In this case it’s pretty simple. As a manager of the country this employee was, well to be as blunt as possible, fucking useless. Now he’s been demoted, he doesn’t seem to have the motivation to want to do the job he’s been employed for, which of course makes our lives pretty simple. He has to go.

This is where you come in dear reader. Download this sample P45 Stick McSnotty’s name on it. Stick it in an envelope. Post it. Why not write a covering letter to go with it to tell him how you really feel!

Here’s how you send a letter to McSnotty:

Constituency Address

Gordon Brown MP
318 High Street,
Fife
Cowdenbeath
KY4 9QS

Westminster Address

Gordon Brown MP
House of Commons London
SW1A 0AA

Greedy, Wasteful, Bastards

 July 23rd, 2010 › Uncategorized › Sir Olly › Comments Off ›

Source

A Conservative MP is calling for action after it emerged the House of Commons is throwing away £70,000 of waste food a year.

Anne Main said the Commons tea rooms and function suites always seemed to be full of unwanted sandwiches and other leftovers.

She said it should be given to the homeless or put to another use rather than just thrown away.

The Commons said it was just 4% of the annual catering budget.

Everyday they amaze me more than the previous day. £70k of food waste a year? Holy.Fucking.Shit!
This tickled me:

The Commons said it was just 4% of the annual catering budget.

If my maths is correct that means the catering budget per annum for the Commons is £1.75 million, which equates to just under £2700 per MP per year and if you want to be more pedantic, that’s just over £224 per month each. So on top of us funding food allowances, among all the other bollocks we pay for, we are also funding the catering of tea rooms and function halls within Parliament and this food isn’t being paid for.

“We have very fat mice,” she joked.

The pest problem in Parliament is well documented lady, but I suggest that it’s not fat mice you should be worried about, fat pigs should be where your attention is diverted. In fact I could suggest a trap for them:

If you ask the manufacturers nicely I’m sure they do them in fat bastard size.

Actually no stop! We can’t be nasty about them, after all they are recycling.

Food waste from the Commons is currently mixed with general waste and used to generate energy at a disposal facility in the London area.

Not bloody likely. Of course in the tradition on lying, deceitful, fat, bastard cunts they’re going to have a review (which is going to cost us money), not to cut down the food wastage but on how to dispose of the food, they’re thinking of using an anaerobic digestion facility

Dear Austerity Dave, Oompa Loompa Nick and which ever retard is in charge of Labour: I have an idea. Here’s another digestion facility that would probably cost less, and be much simpler to use:

Bunch of useless twats the lot of you!