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UK rail minister got engineer sacked for raising safety concerns

michaelt
62 replies
8h7m

The article that got the guy fired is [1] apparently. If you search for "Gareth Dennis" - honestly his criticisms seem pretty mild.

My experience is the UK rail network targets truly patronising levels of safety. Signs and announcements on the dangers of running. Announcements on the dangers of slippery floors in wet weather. Announcements and signs about the importance of holding the handrail on stairs. Special extra video screens and announcements about the dangers of taking luggage on escalators. Announcements and warning signs that a flight of stairs is particularly long and tiring. Announcements on the dangers of using your phone while walking. Announcements that it's good to carry a bottle of water in hot weather.

I'm surprised this guy got fired - in the rail network I know, they'd have addressed his concerns by adding even more posters and announcements.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20240414153709/https://www.indep...

sealeck
28 replies
8h1m

I genuinely don't see the harm of these things – I often think the issue is that lots of measures improve safety at the margins (e.g. if someone is drunk and stumbling down the stairs this announcement might help them) rather than on average. That is: many safety features will produce limited tangible benefit to the average person most of the time, but they do reduce accidents which normally happen at the tail end of the distribution in more extreme circumstances.

cwillu
20 replies
7h35m

Banner blindness. If 95% of safety signage is banal and useless to most people, then most people will simply stop paying attention to signage.

Putting up a sign is not a free action!

short_sells_poo
12 replies
6h51m

To be honest this is a general problem with the UK. Try driving on any major street and you'll realize it's plastered with mostly useless signs. A dozen warnings assault your senses at any one time, which makes it very difficult to pick out what is actually important. This is compounded by sometimes completely braindead implementation of rules. E.g. most bus lanes in London can be used by motorcyclists, but some cannot. There's no rhyme or reason, the entire thing is decided by a small blue sign at the start of a particular stretch which may or may not have an even smaller motorbike icon on it - among an icon for a bus, taxi and pushbike. Whoever thought this is a good idea is either a moron or deliberately wanted to extract fines from motorcyclists who accidentally use the wrong bus lane.

logifail
7 replies
6h37m

To be honest this is a general problem with the UK

Hotel lifts would appear to be another example of this. Automated "doors closing" / "doors opening" announcements seem to be present almost everywhere.

Presumably a significant number people suffer appaling crush injuries from lift doors in other countries ... or maybe they don't, and companies across the UK just let their Health and Safety conslutants get the upper hand.

hnlmorg
6 replies
6h7m

...or visually impaired and thus use those announcements to understand what state the lift is in.

miki123211
2 replies
4h17m

Blind person here, I find the "doors closing" / "doors opening" announcements pretty tiresome, and I don't think they provide any benefit to us.

They sometimes even make things worse. Especially on bilingual elevators (not that uncommon in European countries where English isn't an official language), there are so many announcements that the elevator just can't keep up when there's a lot of traffic. I've seen a few elevators that were always a few announcements behind during periods of high activity.

The "lift (elevator) going up / down" announcements, on the other hand, are quite helpful, and I vastly prefer the European system than the American mess of ADA-compliant beeps.

lupusreal
1 replies
2h4m

Why is the American system a mess? One chime for up, two for down. It's simple and doesn't bother anybody.

vizzier
0 replies
33m

(speaking as a person who isn't blind) The biggest omission seems to be that there is nothing to tell you what floor you've arrived at. This is probably fine for an empty elevator but as soon as it gets busy and there are 10s of floors I'd imagine it gets hard to navigate.

logifail
1 replies
4h45m

...or visually impaired and thus use those announcements to understand what state the lift is in

...but only in lifts in the UK? No, that's not a credible hypothesis.

hnlmorg
0 replies
3h36m

They’re not only in UK lifts and even if they were, that still wouldn’t change the intention of those announcements.

jakey_bakey
0 replies
5h37m

Lol yeah of all the examples to choose

Why are the pavements at crossings so bumpy?! It's political correctness gone mad!

joshuaissac
1 replies
1h50m

Try driving on any major street and you'll realize it's plastered with mostly useless signs

This is not in line with my personal experience. Can you provide some examples of useless signs on typical roads in the UK?

cameronh90
0 replies
1h30m

The "tunnel ahead" sign always struck me as particularly pointless. Who needs that sign? Surely if you're driving towards a tunnel, the enormous tunnel itself is the indication you need that you're heading towards a tunnel?

Honourable mentions for "humps ahead".

graemep
0 replies
4h20m

I agree. Trying to track it all can be distracting.

gambiting
0 replies
2h40m

I'm sorry, but UK is positively devoid of road signs compared to some other countries lol, I've been driving here for well over a decade and it's really nice how few signs are here and it mostly relies on common sense.

Compare to your average road in Poland:

https://motofakty.pl/co-5-metrow-znak/ar/c4-16143839

67 road signs on a 360 metre long stretch of road - and to me, what's shown in the picture is very typical, especially in big cities. There are soooo many signs it's close to impossible to read all of them and still look at the road.

robryk
5 replies
5h33m

Is it still not a free action if it replaced an ad?

philipov
4 replies
4h58m

That makes it literally not free - it was paid for with the opportunity cost of the ad.

Phemist
3 replies
3h13m

At a society level, ads are paid for with the opportunity cost of other things that people could be thinking about, e.g. cancer-curing drugs. We can therefore say that ads cause cancer.

SllX
1 replies
3h1m

Both are at the cost of a generally more tranquil and quiet environment. I would take the most boring, crack-filled and grayest concrete wall over someone else’s messaging whether it is paid for or the agency’s own propaganda.

jellicle
0 replies
1h38m

One of the reasons that people like many tourist destinations is that many tourist destinations forbid most outdoor advertising. It's subtle, probably many tourists don't even realize it, but it changes the entire feel of a place.

Phemist
0 replies
3h9m

Additionally, the ones, whose ad-induced distraction would most benefit society, will not see these ads as they will likely not take the subway.

jasoncartwright
0 replies
6h32m

I saw myself doing this in realtime when visiting California for the first time. The initial shock of seeing signs that warned of cancer causing chemicals in buildings quickly faded when I realised they were on every building - soon becoming as blind to them as the locals.

newsclues
2 replies
7h49m

You think stumbling drunk people are helped by signs and announcements?

justinclift
1 replies
7h24m

Sometimes, probably yes? :)

newsclues
0 replies
6h15m

I'd love to see the research that would substantiate that, from anecdotal evidence, stumbling drunks don't read or listen to anyone.

logifail
1 replies
6h35m

I genuinely don't see the harm of these things [..] they do reduce accidents

It would be good to see actual data backing up this hypothesis.

The cynic in me says another equally plausible hypothesis would be that this is entirely about the owner/operator/landlord avoiding any legal responsibility for accidents than actually reducing the number of accidents.

tim333
0 replies
4h7m

My mother had a job coming up with such warnings. She was a 'home safety technician' for the local council, advising people not to fall off ladders and the like. It seems to work like there are statistics that so many people end up in hospital after falling of a ladder or whatever and the council thinks we must fix this, we'll hire someone to educate the public. The odd poster probably doesn't make much difference to the number of people falling but it was quite an easy and entertaining job for my mum.

MrBuddyCasino
0 replies
7h38m

Behold, the last man.

2-3-7-43-1807
0 replies
7h27m

it's not so much "harmful" as it is a symptom of and also reinforcing a society mentality of immature and infantile irresponsibility. but one might also argue it is harming visual and acoustic silence by constantly announcing something and hanging signs everywhere.

chgs
10 replies
7h39m

Euston is a special case. The lack of training/concern (depending on your level of cynicism) of ticket validity of the barrier staff isn’t unique (Paddington had this problem too), but the unique problem is the way the operator (network rail) do not announce platforms until the last minute leading to stampedes to the barriers.

The announcements are just there to sell more noise cancelling headphones in the on-station shops.

pm215
4 replies
6h50m

I think at Kings Cross also they have a tendency to not announce platforms until quite soon before departure.

michaelt
2 replies
5h26m

Unlike Euston, Kings Cross was extensively renovated for the 2012 olympics, which by the standards of UK rail stations is a very recent upgrade.

They seem to have built it with enough capacity that they can announce platforms at the last minute and send everyone scurrying without causing any great danger.

tialaramex
1 replies
4h30m

Kings Cross is a mess of different systems, especially as the whole Kings Cross/ St Pancras complex rather than solely Kings Cross (which is only a dozen platforms). The low numbered Kings Cross platforms (zero through seven) are all accessed via a sideways entrance gate line, which is not good at all and you'd clearly never do that unless there's no economic alternative.

michaelt
0 replies
2h1m

Oh absolutely. The underground bit is a total maze. Crossings on all the nearby roads are a nightmare. Nowhere near enough seating.

But that gate line you mention has loads of ticket barriers - there's zero crush risk.

FridayoLeary
0 replies
2h18m

10-15 minutes in my experience.

masfuerte
3 replies
4h27m

They delay platform announcements because they believe that a platform crammed full of waiting passengers will become a crush risk when the arriving passengers start to disembark.

When they announce the platform there is often enough time to stroll, but people rush because they want a seat.

It's a hard problem to solve in the short term.

ralferoo
1 replies
3h21m

there is often enough time to stroll, but people rush because they want a seat.

I'm someone who used to frequently catch the last train north to Birmingham on a Saturday night (9:40pm), and it was usually full and so some people were without a seat. Of course we all rushed to try to get a seat. IMHO, it's foolishness to think people would do otherwise in that situation - after all who wants to stand for over an hour and a half when you've paid over £30 for the ticket?

bee_rider
0 replies
2h0m

Maybe they need reserved seating, haha.

lol768
0 replies
3h28m

Anyone in the know knows where to look to find out the platform before it's "sanctioned for the public to be informed about it".

And no, there isn't always time to stroll to the train, I've seen some really, really late announcements. Couple this with very large countdown timers that they actually added recently to each platform and you can see exactly why people feel stressed and rush.

They delay platform announcements because they believe that a platform crammed full of waiting passengers will become a crush risk when the arriving passengers start to disembark.

The alternative is forcing them all to wait in the same cramped concourse area (with most space lost to retail units). During disruption, it gets genuinely difficult to move through this area. It has felt unpleasant in normal use for a while, but when there are cancellations and delays it feels positively dangerous. I am not exaggerating when I say that it feels very much like it's only a matter of time before something happens and someone gets crushed or trampled.

There's none of this nonsense at some other London termini, and Birmingham New Street manages to let people wait on the platforms. Why can't Euston?

SllX
0 replies
3h5m

The announcements are just there to sell more noise cancelling headphones in the on-station shops.

This is a good—albeit shameless—business model. They could probably do the same thing in San Francisco’s MUNI stations.

whatshisface
4 replies
3h22m

Signs and announcements on the dangers of running. Announcements on the dangers of slippery floors in wet weather. Announcements and signs about the importance of holding the handrail on stairs. Special extra video screens and announcements about the dangers of taking luggage on escalators. Announcements and warning signs that a flight of stairs is particularly long and tiring. Announcements on the dangers of using your phone while walking. Announcements that it's good to carry a bottle of water in hot weather.

I don't think there is a shred of evidence that being bombarded with neurotic fretting improves safety - here in the states this is usually recognized as limitation of liability. Juries will accept "we warned you," as a counterbalance to their universal tendency to want to side with the little guy against the giant corporation.

lesuorac
3 replies
2h40m

Well, it could be liability related.

But, falls are basically the only way people get injured at DC's Metro so it seems to make sense to have significant signage about that. I'd have to imagine there's nothing unique about DC so it's probably the same story for the UK.

"96% of the customer injuries were related to slips and falls within rail stations, and about 52% of those were on escalators." [1]. The stat for employees was 40% with being struck by an object in #2 at 25%.

[1]: https://wmata.com/about/calendar/events/upload/3A-Metro-s-Sa...

whatshisface
0 replies
2h0m

What's the connection between signage talking about falls and the rate of falls? I don't see any.

techwizrd
0 replies
1h26m

I work in transportation safety, primarily aviation but we also support WMATA. We usually define barriers which prevent, control, or mitigate an accident or undesired state [0]. Safety systems often require warning signage. Anecdotally, I find that regulators, companies, etc. use signage or safety bulletins than active barriers [0] because they are cheaper and quicker to implement. Even when they implement something like, say, abrasive floor treatments [1], that is only one barrier and likely imperceptible to the public.

Warning signage may be helpful, but I am skeptical of its effectiveness (especially as implemented). For example, "ice-warning signs do not have a statistically significant impact on the frequency or severity of vehicular accidents that involve ice." [2]

(Disclaimer: Opinions are my own.)

[0] https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/solutions/enablon/bowtie/ex...

[1] https://www.nata.aero/data/files/webinar_documents/preventin...

[2] https://doi.org/10.1016/S0001-4575(00)00020-8

hex4def6
0 replies
1h35m

I'm not sure being reminded not to slip would reduce my likelihood of slipping.

Seems like things like making sure floor transitions are mild, adequate drainage, textured floors would be more effective. (polished stone and concrete are a nightmare with some shoes that I own in wet weather).

truculent
2 replies
6h40m

The most egregious ones were ubiquitous signs on the London Underground stating that travellers should take care on the escalators; there were 111 accidents on the escalators last year, after all.

There are over 4 million tube journeys a day[1].

[1]: https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2023/novemb...

closewith
0 replies
6h31m

So the signs work!

PaulRobinson
0 replies
1h37m

Those accidents can be life changing, and often cause delays to services or dangerous levels of congestion during rush hour. I also suspect TfL are motivated to reduce liability - if they can show on CCTV somebody walking past a sign saying to take care, and then not taking care, TfL's coffers (i.e. the public's, it's not a private profit making entity), can be protected a little more from egregious legal claims.

rootusrootus
1 replies
2h14m

What stuck out to me wasn't the signage, but "See it, say it. Sorted." Right along with "mind the gap!" that is going to be my enduring memory of UK rail.

cameronh90
0 replies
1h27m

"If you see something that doesn't look right, speak to staff or text British Transport Police on 61016. We'll sort it. See it, say it, sorted."

It haunts my dreams.

red_admiral
1 replies
4h39m

The UK rail network is in the unhappy position of getting sued whenever someone gets hurt, however stupid they're being. I think there was a case where some youths cut through the fencing around a depot, climbed on a train and got killed by the overhead wire - and then Network Rail got fined for not having a more vandal-proof fence or something like that.

jnsaff2
1 replies
7h58m

The posters and announcements won't make anything safer. They are CYA for the time the risk materializes.

zero_k
0 replies
7h17m

Exactly. See Sidney Dekker's Field Guide to Understanding Human Error. The posters do (almost) nothing -- other than covering the backside of those who put them up, and doing safety theatre. Looks good, does nothing for safety.

The same author, Sidney Dekker, has a very good book about how to deal with someone like this whistleblower. It's called "Just Culture". Well worth a read. Spolier: It's not to silence them, not this way. You can silence the person by, you know, actually doing something useful. But that requires actual change, and more importantly, a change in attitude. And you need to convince the crowds that you are doing better by NOT putting up posters. You'll be surprised how many people really think the posters help.

yodelshady
0 replies
7h13m

Interesting, "the Office of Rail and Road ... issued Network Rail with an improvement notice"

For the benefit of readers not versed with UK regulation, an improvement notice is a formal instrument under the powers of the Health and Safety Executive. Whilst short of a prosecution notice, it definitely indicates that the powers that be are Officially Not Happy with, in this case, Network Rail.

throw73748
0 replies
7h51m

Posters are just a charade.

Try to remove dangerous aggressive dog from transport, and see what happens.

philjohn
0 replies
4h21m

But then trains highly overcrowded so in the case of another Greyrigg the death and injury toll would be far higher.

But affording to a train company there is "no upper limit on the number of passengers in a given train carriage". I did point out that the laws of physics, and basic human physiology would refute that assertion.

So, maybe safety theatre rather than patronising levels of safety.

jdietrich
0 replies
2h39m

>My experience is the UK rail network targets truly patronising levels of safety.

It's clearly working, because the British railway network is the safest large network in Europe, despite some pretty dilapidated infrastructure.

https://international-railway-safety-council.com/safety-stat...

dazc
0 replies
5h13m

I believe the purpose of these safety warnings is more about mitigating liability for accidents rather than any true concern for traveller's well being.

ReptileMan
0 replies
58m

My experience is the UK rail network targets truly patronising levels of safety. Signs and announcements on the dangers of running. Announcements on the dangers of slippery floors in wet weather. Announcements and signs about the importance of holding the handrail on stairs. Special extra video screens and announcements about the dangers of taking luggage on escalators. Announcements and warning signs that a flight of stairs is particularly long and tiring. Announcements on the dangers of using your phone while walking. Announcements that it's good to carry a bottle of water in hot weather.

Everything wrong with the UK today can be summarized as society going from "Mind the gap" to this insanity.

GoToRO
0 replies
6h15m

those are just to limit their liability: we told them not to so it's not our fault. The real safety, the one that they should provide is somewhere else.

DrBazza
0 replies
7h21m

You're talking about railway lines and stations with ad-hoc upgrades that are as much as 200 years old (yes). Most of the network is comfortably over 100 years old and trains were slower, and frankly, people were less mollycoddled.

But, with regards to the article, he's 100% correct, Euston is dangerous. And it's currently one of the worst central London stations for things going wrong. It's pretty much every other week at the moment. London Bridge used to be as bad with overcrowding until they rebuilt most of it.

Then again, Euston was supposed to be redeveloped for HS2, and that's been kicked into the long grass, even though all the hard work has been done. I don't think there's anyone truly as stupid as the UK government.

dobladov
22 replies
8h35m

People whose job is managing and not understanding issues does not want to deal with issues, it’s in their interest to always give the impression of everything working smoothly, that's why engineering driven companies fail the moment that managerial people takes over.

cedws
9 replies
8h29m

It’s a very HN thing to say, but god, the world would be so much better if we kicked these parasites out and engineers ran the show.

Rinzler89
5 replies
8h27m

Good engineers don't have the neccesariy personality traits to climb over corpses of others to get into upper management. So those who end up in upper management are always the worst sociopaths who only know how to play the politics game as their main goal is just climbing the ladder, not developing good products/services. Exceptions do exist (Jensen Huang, Lisa Su, etc) but that's why they are the exceptions.

ashkankiani
3 replies
8h8m

I get nervous reading when people write exceptions and name "good" CEOs or "good" celebrities. Lots of skeletons come out later. I don't like to put people on a pedestal, especially those we don't know intimately well.

nordsieck
1 replies
8h1m

I get nervous reading when people write exceptions and name "good" CEOs or "good" celebrities

Good CEOs are good at being CEOs. That doesn't mean that they're good people.

Steve Jobs was pretty famously an a-hole, and did a number of morally questionable things.

But he also took Apple from the verge of bankrupcy to one of the most valuable companies in the world.

OJ Simpson was a fantastic football player. And he murdered (my opinion) Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.

It's OK to acknowledge that some people are good at one thing and are also terrible in other ways.

HPsquared
0 replies
7h44m

Funnily enough that's also often the issue with engineers - good at technical things but not so good elsewhere. There's a reason we all have different jobs.

lupusreal
0 replies
7h59m

Better to acknowledge that you are speaking in generalities and exceptions exist, but not to name those exceptions.

benterix
0 replies
8h10m

That's a vast overgeneralization. Sometimes instead of being sociopath the opposite is needed: the so-called emotional intelligence and knowing where the wind blows from so that you can act accordingly. I good example is Mira Murati whom I definitely wouldn't call a sociopath and instead is very flexible in her position, something that would be quite painful for many engineers (at least the ones I know).

dagw
1 replies
7h29m

Lots of people with engineering degrees and backgrounds hold very senior positions at large companies and happily make short term, profit driven, decisions every day. Unless you want to play a game of "no TRUE engineer" I don't think it would make a huge difference.

hermitcrab
0 replies
6h8m

The UK is full of stuff, built by Victorian engineers. Quite a lot of it is still working. Some of it is quite beautiful. I doubt anything built by private equity backed companies will still be working in 100 years.

JTbane
0 replies
4h16m

I don't know about your tastes, but personally (as an individual contributor) the idea of classic manager work (dealing with vacations, perf reviews, hiring, firing, etc) are extremely unappealing to me.

khafra
7 replies
7h51m

Executives and managers do actually contribute useful things to large-enough firms. But the failure mode of engineer-driven companies is Juicero; the failure mode of MBA-driven firms is killing people for profit (lying in order to sell poison to third-world mothers, sending death squads after labor organizers, lowering passenger airliner quality until they start falling out of the sky, etc.).

rqtwteye
1 replies
5h41m

I wouldn’t call Juicero engineering driven. More over-engineering driven. Similar to software developers creating hyper scalable microservice architectures for even the most trivial systems. True engineering is to understand the requirements and creating an efficient solution for those, not just throwing every possible technology at the project.

regularfry
0 replies
19m

That's why it's a failure mode.

phanimahesh
1 replies
7h7m

Juicero feels like a manager or growth hacker or hype person driven thing. I find it hard to imagine juicero being an engineering team.

khafra
0 replies
6h6m

I'm not a mechanical engineer, so I base my "overly engineer-driven" impression of the company almost solely on this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ

mindslight
0 replies
5h2m

... and the Juicero type failure is worse from the perspective of most investors.

maeil
0 replies
7h43m

But the failure mode of engineer-driven companies is Juicero; the failure mode of MBA-driven firms is killing people for profit.

This is one to hang on the wall as an office poster!

blitzar
0 replies
6h44m

Juicero feels like a failure mode of grindset.

Rinzler89
3 replies
8h33m

Employees: - It's 3.6 Röntgen, but that's as high as the meter...

Management: - 3.6 Röntgen, not great not terrible.

ChrisMarshallNY
1 replies
3h49m

Was that from HBO's Chernobyl?

ThePowerOfFuet
0 replies
2h53m

Yes.

gaius_baltar
0 replies
2h56m

A more fitting quote would be "They gave them the propaganda number".

mjburgess
19 replies
5h21m

One of the reasons I'm against nationalisation, is that when the government contracts out services to the private sector it hold them to a high standard -- and regulates in lots of saftey/etc. conditions.

When the gov runs services there's a massive conflict of interest in regulating them properly: its embarrassing for the gov, there's no accountability for profitability/sustainable-use-of-resources/etc.

So whilst centrist (and center-left on some matters), I'm largely in favour of a gov which runs via contracted services with significant regulation and oversight.

Lots of cover-up stories have come out recently which show that political control over key services undermines their accountability, not improves it.

h1fra
8 replies
5h18m

You are not from Britain (or Europe), no?

Privatisation of the rail in UK is a nightmare, the government is not holding the private sector to a high standard at all. High profit and High standard are barely compatible, I'm not sure they are even good examples in the world.

mjburgess
3 replies
5h13m

Yes, I'm from the UK.

1. Compare and contrast the privately run phase of rail service with the public version before the early 90s. It was low-use by the public and in a decrepit state.

2. The form privatisation took in the UK kept the most expensive, old, difficult to maintain etc. parts of the rail networks under public control. You saw what happened (HS2) when that public control was actually used to improve the infrastructure.

... We'll have to see what happens when MPs are suddenly setting budgets for rail companies, and whether you think you'll get what you want. I doubt it.

youngtaff
0 replies
3h28m

In the 70's and 80's the train system was deliberately underfunded and rundown so it's no wonder it got worse during that time

smcl
0 replies
4h53m

With 1) you're comparing apples to oranges and you're still wrong. The turnaround in rail use in the UK began in the 1980s before the private train operating companies got involved. And if you're referring to the network itself being in "a decrepit state" before and now being improved to the point where it can sustain higher capacities ... well you can thank Network Rail for that (note: not a private company). The TOCs are headed for nationalisation anyway, leaving the ROSCOs as the big privatisation "success" (in that they've extracted enormous profits while not exactly contributing anything particularly novel).

What we saw with HS2 is a large (and frankly completely necessary) engineering project getting fucked around with and repeatedly chopped down until it no longer satisfied its original plan (providing greater capacity for both local and national services by providing a new North-South line that happened to be "high-speed") and became exactly what those wielding the axe that killed it accused it of ("just a way for some to get to London slightly faster").

pjc50
0 replies
4h38m

We'll have to see what happens when MPs are suddenly setting budgets for rail companies

Good rail outcomes were obviously impossible under a Tory government regardless of how the control worked, but they might be possible under a Labour government. We'll have to see.

ApolloFortyNine
2 replies
5h9m

Japan's bullet trains, JR East is private, and the Shinkansen has one of the lowest average delays in the world (literally less than a minute).

amiga386
1 replies
4h49m

The pressure and bullying to achieve Japan's train promptness sometimes kills hundreds of people, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amagasaki_derailment

Drivers for JR West face financial penalties for lateness as well as being forced into harsh and humiliating retraining programs known as nikkin kyōiku (日勤教育, "dayshift education"), which include weeding and grass-cutting duties during the day. The final report officially concluded that the retraining system was one probable cause of the crash. This program consisted of severe verbal abuse, forcing the employees to repent by writing extensive reports. Many experts saw the process of nikkin kyoiku as punishment and psychological torture, not retraining
ApolloFortyNine
0 replies
3h32m

A 19 year old example doesn't seem great, surely things can change in 20 years.

Also that derailment was truly caused by surpassing the speed limit, which shouldn't even be possible (even more so today). Enforcing a speed limit by block is trivial. Which it looks like is what they did after.

tim333
0 replies
3h45m

I'm a Brit and would say the privatised rail works ok. The main gripe is it can be overpriced.

If you look at the Wikipedia on it, rail use dropped off under nationalization and then pretty much doubled after it was privatised. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of...

My local line / stations have been hugely upgraded over the period though I'm not sure you can put that down to privatisation. (Thameslink/Kings Cross St Pancras)

phatfish
3 replies
5h7m

The private sector pumps sewage into UK rivers while paying billions in dividends to their global investors.

Then when the government tries to reign them back in the excuse is their company is "neither financeable nor investible" without customers footing the bill. No shit, it was loaded with debt and money syphoned out of it for 30 years.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/aug/28/tha...

Exactly the same happens with private train companies in the UK, though hopefully not for long.

mjburgess
2 replies
5h3m

Sure, and what would happen if the gov ran the system? It's a 300bn fix. The only difference would be that you wouldnt know about it.

Thankfully MPs are incentivised to publish this stuff against private companies.

smcl
0 replies
4h47m

Well "the gov" does run the system in Scotland. Scottish Water, which didn't suffer privatisation, ticks over nicely - providing high quality service at low cost and reinvesting any profits.

You're inventing a hypothetical nightmare scenario while ignoring a very real and positive one because it's inconvenient for your "privatisation = good" argument.

phatfish
0 replies
4h44m

How would the government be able to hide that? There is oversight of the Treasury by the OBR and there is more than one political party in the UK, opposition MPs happily point out all the failures of the party in power.

My view is that it is easy to accuse government services of being dysfunctional because there is far MORE transparency than for private companies. Bankrupting a water company can happen in plain sight by a private company because money that was supposed to be used to, you know, build a functioning sewage system is fed through a maze of offshore accounts for years.

beeboobaa3
2 replies
5h17m

british rail is privately owned. this seems to undermine your whole argument.

smcl
0 replies
4h46m

British Rail has ceased to exist for quite some time

XCabbage
0 replies
4h9m

Not really true. National Rail, which owns the tracks is a quango, not a private company. The actual train operators are truly privately owned but it is important to understand that they are not privately making any major strategic decisions about the network, just maintaining the rolling stock and providing staff; their routes, times, prices, and profits are mostly set by the state (with some narrow room for discretion) and not by the private sector.

nayroclade
1 replies
5h9m

The current state of the UK water industry doesn't seem to support this theory. Privatisation has only lead to water companies like Thames Water taking on unsustainable debt while paying out billions in dividends, underinvesting in infrastructure, and polluting like crazy. Now they are demanding permission from the regulator to massively hike prices, because the foreign investment funds that own them are apparently unwilling to countenance the idea of losing any money on their investments.

Infrastructure like public transport and utilities are not, and never will be, functional markets, and regulation is always captured or ineffective in the long term. Privatisation is only a method to let financial markets pillage public goods.

mjburgess
0 replies
5h6m

Sure, I believe these dividend policies used to be illegal.

I would certainly make it illegal to do share buybacks, and to issue dividends on credit.

Privitisation doesnt really work with the private equity model that has been developed over the last decade, ie., buy a biz on credit and raid its resources.

But i think it's easier to get these laws passed than require a politican investigate resource waste, bad service, etc. in services they are responsible for. The UK gov is structured to disable accountability at every level -- that's a much harder fix.

pjc50
0 replies
4h40m

when the government contracts out services to the private sector it hold them to a high standard

PPE Medpro?

The fundamental problem with this kind of neoliberalism is that if you don't trust government to manage something directly, then outsourcing it doesn't help, because the management oversight still has to be done, but now it happens indirectly.

It only works if you can have an actual market with actual market forces. What tends to get built is a "fake" market, where instead of individual service users picking their preference you get a tendering process. The rail tendering process is a fake market: the trains are owned by ROSCOs (banks), the rails are owned by the state (Network rail) because the private operator skimped on safety then collapsed, and the TOCs transfer all their staff through TUPE every time the franchise changes. All that changes is the livery.

Specifying through contract is a lot less efficient than direct management (see Coase, theory of the firm). This is why Tube privatization failed; they got up to hundreds of thousands of pages of contract before realizing it wasn't going to work.

londons_explore
18 replies
8h48m

This guy will get 1 years salary as compensation after winning an unfair dismissal case, and then he will never work in rail again. He'll have to pay much of those winnings back to his legal team.

Over his life, he will almost certainly earn less.

Shouldn't have spoken out. Had he kept quiet, a crush would have happened, a few people would have been pushed off a platform and died under a train, and it would be a "tragedy" - but he'd get to keep his livelihood.

blitzar
2 replies
6h48m

The maximum unfair dismissal compensatory award (in the UK) is £105,707. Imagine if the maximum you had to pay if you stole from or defrauded your employer was £100k ...

The legislation tends to protect the paper entity 'the corporation' rather than the living breathing human.

londons_explore
0 replies
4h41m

You can still sue the company for other reasons - for example if they stole from you the employee.

RyanHamilton
0 replies
6h37m

Wow, I didn't believe you so googled and I'm stunned. There is a limit for unfair dismissal. Thanks.

vegardx
1 replies
8h22m

I get the point you're trying to make here, and the sarcastic undertone, but I'd have issues living with myself if people died because of something that I was able to identify and that was preventable, and I did nothing.

The whole case strikes me as odd. Not only did the higher ups know about the problem, they also left a paper trail about keeping a lid on it and getting rid of the guy. This opens them up to a lot of scenarios, like:

- As demonstrated by this case, the information came out because of the wrongful termination

- If an accident had happened there's a fairly high chance that the investigators would uncover it, either because the engineer in question came forward or because they think they should have known about this, and cracks appear when they start asking questions.

An unspoken rule in a lot of fields is that you make sure that this kind of information never reaches the people that could be held liable for it. The people that are likely to be held responsible at least have to make it appear that they're not trying to suppress information like this. You quickly lose that ability if you actively try to get rid of people that tries to raise an issue. So they surround themselves with middle management that knows to not bring things up to them, without being explicitly told so.

yieldcrv
0 replies
8h5m

The point is that there are many people sleeping fine or not, that kept their livelihood by not whistleblowing. solely due to the misaligned incentives and lack of accountability

surfingdino
1 replies
8h13m

He'll find a job as a security consultant abroad. He'll be fine.

fragmede
0 replies
7h44m

Being forced from your home and into moving abroad and into a new career might work out for him, but it's still seems like a lot of unnecessary turmoil for him and and his familybecause he chose to do the right thing.

hwhwhwhhwhwh
1 replies
8h2m

You will at max live another 100 years. Where will he take all these extra savings to?

ninininino
0 replies
1h19m

This is going to surprise you, but having more money enables you to spend more of your finite lifespan working on your own initiatives/goals in life (whether they are financially rewarding or not) without needing to persuade someone wealthier than you that they want what you want and are willing to pay to do it.

tsimionescu
0 replies
8h37m

I bet even if your predictions are right, he'll still live a happier life knowing he has saved some lives.

scrlk
0 replies
8h31m

See Roger Boisjoly, an engineer at Morton Thiokol who tried to blow the whistle on design flaws in the Space Shuttle's solid rocket boosters before the Challenger disaster:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Boisjoly

Boisjoly sent a memo describing the problem to his managers, but was apparently ignored.[8] Following several further memos, a task force was convened to investigate the matter, but after a month Boisjoly realized that the task force had no power, no resources, and no management support. In late 1985, Boisjoly advised his managers that if the problem was not fixed, there was a distinct chance that a shuttle mission would end in disaster. No action was taken.

After President Ronald Reagan ordered a presidential commission to review the disaster, Boisjoly was one of the witnesses called. He gave accounts of how and why he felt the O-rings had failed, and argued that the caucus called by Morton Thiokol managers, which resulted in a recommendation to launch, was an "unethical decision-making forum resulting from intense customer intimidation."

According to Boisjoly, Thiokol unassigned him from space work, and he was ostracized by his colleagues and managers.
gsky
0 replies
3h45m

No good deed goes unpunished sadly.

what a f..d up world we live in

glitchc
0 replies
5h19m

Yeah, I mean, why even become an engineer? Why work in safety? Let's rubber-stamp everything the manager says it's good. It must be good, they said it! Think about your words the next time you or a relative or a friend is hurt or dies in a preventable accident. Thank god you're not an engineer.

datavirtue
0 replies
6h26m

The system is what it does. And that's the system.

HPsquared
0 replies
8h22m

Society depends on these kinds of people.

2-3-7-43-1807
0 replies
7h26m

this is the right attitude - exactly.

halicarnassus
15 replies
7h17m

In the comments here I read a lot about if this is whistleblowing or not, or if disciplinary measures are warranted for an employee "badmouthing" an employer's client while not having an official mandate to speak in public, while mostly ignoring the threats made by a government official.

This is exactly the problem why the world sucks so hard.

The engineer, certainly knowledgeable in this field, made a measured public remark, which could have saved lives. He has done nothing wrong, because he didn't claim to speak on behalf of his employer, and has the right to speak his mind as a person. In public, and with a lot of reach.

The government official, however, applied unconstitutional pressure to get the engineer fired and threatened his employer to lose business. Humanly very low and damaging to future public rail infrastructure, if a capable company is not allowed to provide services anymore and therefore most likely to increase prices through diminished competition.

If anyone should lose their job over this matter, it clearly should be the UK rail minister.

callamdelaney
8 replies
7h15m

There is no constitution here, your existence and rights as a British citizen is at the convenience of the state.

graemep
5 replies
6h11m

Its not that simple.

There is a body of constitutional law. There is extensive law governing what powers ministers have - powers are granted to them by legislation.

There are human rights granted by law and treaty. Everything from some clauses of the Magna Carta that are still in force https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofp... to the European Convention on Human Rights.

philwelch
4 replies
5h48m

And thanks to parliamentary supremacy any and all of those protections can be repealed by a simple majority of the House of Commons.

graemep
3 replies
4h23m

True, but that is a long way from how I read the comment I replied too

philwelch
2 replies
4h12m

In countries that actually have a strong constitution—the US is the primary example though I hope others exist—the Constitution itself is the supreme law of the land and is, by design, difficult to amend. When legislatures pass laws that exceed the bounds of the Constitution, the courts strike down those laws as null and void.

In that sense, Britain does not have a constitution. Obviously it has a constitution in some sense, because there is always some set of laws, norms, traditions, and historical precedents that constitute the basis of government. But this is a much weaker sense of the term. For instance, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 was a “constitutional” law that supposedly made it impossible to call a snap election, but a snap election was nonetheless called in 2019 via the Early Parliamentary General Election Act 2019, which only required a simple majority because it had equivalent authority to the FTPA itself.

tengwar2
0 replies
3h44m

No, in that sense the UK does not have an American-style constitution - no more, no less. It is not accidental that Parliament can reverse any decision taken by an earlier Parliament: in fact it is one of the most important parts of the constitution that no Parliament can take a decision which binds a later one. It is different from the American design, yes, but the way in which the American constitution is used does not seem praiseworthy, not does it suggest that it would be wise to copy it.

lesuorac
0 replies
2h24m

When legislatures pass laws that exceed the bounds of the Constitution, the courts strike down those laws as null and void.

Well, that's not actually in the US constitution.

And, the Executive branch is free to ignore what the Judicial branch [1] does since ya know, it's the Executive branch that would execute any decisions.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_Nation_v._Georgia#Aft...

immibis
1 replies
3h16m

The same as an American citizen, then. That piece of paper locked up in the national archives (or wherever) didn't come running, armed with a gun, to save the life of George Floyd or anyone else.

callamdelaney
0 replies
1h48m

No but it is a basis in law for eg freedom of speech, that sort of right is none existent here. Id much rather have a formal, immutable constitution.

smcl
2 replies
7h4m

while not having an official mandate to speak in public

Gareth Dennis has been a public figure for a while, appearing on BBC News a few times. So there was apparently a provision for this in his contract with Systra: https://x.com/GarethDennis/status/1829053692508623154

keyshapegeo99
1 replies
4h45m

Systra also lauded his media appearances on their website: https://web.archive.org/web/20240829120751/https://www.systr...

[Gareth's] passion and enthusiasm for all things rail are well-known across the sector through his weekly #Railnatter podcast and as a regular national press rail commentator
smcl
0 replies
4h37m

Ah that's an interesting revelation. But yeah totally unsurprising really, he's very good at talking in plain, accessible English about rail-related matters that might otherwise cause people to glaze over and ignore. And it's not like he's ever been a shit-stirrer either - in the interview in question he was pretty reasonable. It's just that this guy Lord Hendy has taken a dislike to NR being called out and started a little vendetta against Dennis.

rsynnott
1 replies
6h55m

I suspect the minister may be an ex-minister soon, alright; it’s not a good look, and he’s only been in the job a month or so, so replacing wouldn’t be a huge deal.

alephnerd
0 replies
5h41m

He's also a mid-level minister, so it's pretty easy to can him.

Most Ministers are just political appointees anyhow - the actual work is done by the Civil Service.

XCabbage
0 replies
4h46m

What aspect of the UK's nebulous "constitution" do you claim was violated here? (Or are you just reflexively/thoughtlessly saying "unconstitutional" because it would be a First Amendment violation in the USA?)

jl6
14 replies
8h26m

Out of interest, what would the right resolution have been to reduce the risk of a crush due to overcrowding? Close the station entrance when at capacity?

lupusreal
10 replies
8h20m

Run more trains so the station never reaches capacity. Or expand the station.

michaelt
3 replies
7h55m

> Or expand the station.

According to [1] nineteen national rail trains will depart from Euston in the next hour. And according to [2] Euston has 16 platforms.

Can a station platform really only dispatch 1.2 trains per hour? Fifty minutes per train? Seems kinda low to me.

I guess they need time to clean the trains, and space for trains that arrive well before their scheduled departure time. But still, it seems like a lot of platforms for the number of trains.

[1] https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/live-trains/departures/london... [2] https://www.networkrail.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Eus...

smcl
0 replies
7h7m

Platforms != distinct rail lines. Now, if only there were plans to run a new national, let's say high speed, rail link from the North of England into Euston which would improve this capacity ...

shaoonb
0 replies
6h36m

The capacity limit is the number of tracks. There are 4 AC and 2 DC tracks on the line out of Euston and they are also used for freight trains as well as the Bakerloo line.

blitzar
0 replies
6h35m

Heathrow has 115 gates but only does 50 departures an hour.

HenryBemis
3 replies
8h7m

Both solutions would take months/years to implement.

"More trains" mean they need to radically improve service/repairs and/or purchase of new trains.

"Expand the station" would mean that they would have to shut down all-of or large-parts of it while works take place. I remember being impacted of the London Bridge train station de-spaghetti-fying the tracks. I moved out of the area I was living so eventually I was impacted for only 4-5 months.

I will not touch the matter of costs.

stuaxo
1 replies
8h0m

London bridge tracks untangled is so much better for throughput - I remember so many long waits as a Brighton train blocked the whole station crossing the tracks.

One surprising good thing the gov did at that time was insist on the rebuild of the station itself, it was particularly grim, and just a mess.

I've lived nearby the whole time and the new station is a nice space, generally efficient with good throughput for the trains.

I'm pessimistic, but really hoping they don't stick with plans to build a too small terminus in London for HS1, not too optimistic as we have Rachael Reeves as a continuity austerity Chancellor - lets see.

smcl
0 replies
6h53m

plans to build a too small terminus in London for HS1

You're talking about HS2 and Old Oak Common, right? Yeah that's a peculiar choice of terminus

lupusreal
0 replies
8h1m

Nobody said all problems have cheap solutions.

stuaxo
1 replies
8h5m

Not sure there is more capacity for trains there.

smcl
0 replies
7h40m

There were plans to expand Euston, then the Tories cancelled those plans and sold off the land that was acquired to accommodate said plans to make sure it wouldn't ever happen in the future (by this point they were already collapsing in popularity and clearly going to lose the election).

waiwai933
0 replies
7h33m

My understanding is that the crush risk at Euston is entirely an operational issue of Network Rail's making (NR being the station facility owner), by deliberately not announcing platforms until the last moment, causing passengers to run to the platform en masse. If platforms were announced earlier, the crush risk would be seriously mitigated.

The obvious next question is whether platforms _can_ be announced earlier - to which the answer is, as I understand it, yes. The platforms are known about much further in advance and the reason for the delay appears to be a combination of intransigence by Euston management and a lack of sufficient ticket gateline staff by the train operators.

rwmj
0 replies
8h2m

They do close the station entrance at Euston with some regularity when trains are not running (which happens annoyingly often because of the parlous state of the railways).

pjc50
0 replies
7h57m

London Underground does close access to platforms when they are at capacity.

The station itself is probably running the maximum number of trains possible. The plan for increasing throughput northwards is HS2, which the previous government put on hold.

alexchamberlain
14 replies
8h51m

As long as it's done in the right way, I think a supplier raising safety concerns should be a reason to do _more_ business with them, not less.

londons_explore
8 replies
8h50m

Sounds like it was done via the media, not the correct internal channels.

Pingk
5 replies
8h44m

Maybe, but it was already public knowledge:

In September 2023 the government regulator, the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), had issued an improvement notice to Network Rail about overcrowding at the station, warning: “You have failed to implement, so far as reasonably practicable, effective measures to prevent risks to health and safety of passengers (and other persons at the station) during passenger surges and overcrowding events at London Euston Station.”

It's concerning to me that Hendy was the chair of Network Rail from 2015 before becoming Transport Minister, and here he is sacking someone after a comment about his former workplace. Should definitely be an investigation into his motives/incentives IMO

londons_explore
2 replies
8h40m

"public" via a set of documents hidden deep on an official webpage is very different to "public" as a news headline.

rcxdude
0 replies
8h37m

But it is presumably the "Correct internal channels"?

pastage
1 replies
8h19m

I wonder if there are still overcrowding at that station, or if it really was fixed in 2023.

A bit of a Streisand effect going on here.

luke-stanley
0 replies
6h9m

Well, when I was in Euston rail station a few weeks ago, it was very overcrowded. It seemed worse in the day than the night. Seems like the minister is missing the necessity of acting with integrity and transparency, a lesson they frequently need reminding of. Surely there must be better person the PM could find for the job, that don't feel a need write harassing letters, bullying train companies into firing staff?

lawn
0 replies
8h48m

That's usually the only option when nobody listens.

dathinab
0 replies
8h47m

but do "correct internal channels" exist, are accessible by the people people in raising concerns (especially potentially anonymously) and are not ignored?

because most times they aren't really usable if they even exist

and raising concerns on such channels can often get you in as much trouble as doing so publicly -- but without you concerns being pretty much guaranteed ignored

crimsoneer
2 replies
8h33m

It's notable here that he didn't engage as a representative of the company, but more as an "engineering writer", probably after the newspaper reached out for comment.

But yes, not exactly a fan of people this senior sticking their nose in misconduct matters, but also, if you're employed by a company, you probably shouldn't badmouth their clients in the national papers and not be aware that's risky. It's not exactly whistleblowing.

etiennebausson
1 replies
8h25m

Raising safety issues is part of a senior engineer's duties (or any engineer, really).

Since railways through Europe are a state monopoly, it's not like there are tons of people in the industry that do not work for said 'client'. Who is supposed to pull the alarm in this case? No One? That's how you end up with Boeing-adjacent engineering.

pjc50
0 replies
7h54m

railways through Europe are a state monopoly

The situation is much more stupid than that: there's a set of "private" companies, some of which are substantially owned by states and some are not, all of which are quasi-monopolies.

blcknight
1 replies
8h41m

There’s rarely a “right” way to whistleblow. Most of the official channels in any bureaucracy exist to both sound nice and simultaneously sweep everything under the rug

acdha
0 replies
5h39m

Yes: it takes an extraordinary amount of cultural back-pressure to counter out the tendency to protect the organizational hierarchy. This can be slightly better in the public sector when laws require disclosure but it's usually still too easy to obscure matters or, especially, rely on complex organizational structures and outsourcing to diffuse responsibility to the point that it’s hard to hold any one person accountable.

blcknight
9 replies
8h44m

In 2013, Peter Hendy, who was then the Commissioner of Transport for London, was accused of engaging in a nine-month extramarital affair with Rachael Grundy, a call girl who charged £140 per hour. Grundy alleged that Hendy provided her with several Oyster cards loaded with £10 as gifts

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hendy

mschuster91
3 replies
8h25m

Lol, there's even more classy things about him on there:

During 2014, Hendy reportedly spent over £1,200 in taxpayer-provided money on lunches and dinners, including on one occasion more than £90 in alcohol.

And that despite a 650k salary - as if he couldn't afford to get wasted on his own. What a disgrace.

morsch
0 replies
7h39m

Otoh regular public sector employees (from what I hear) don't even get free coffee at the office.

hermitcrab
0 replies
6h2m

And us plebs are still massively subsiding the food and drink of UK MPs and Lords. As well as paying their rent and loads of other expenses, on top of a pretty decent salary. Why should they get drunk at tax payers expense? Funny how austerity always affects the poorest, but doesn't touch the politicians.

blitzar
0 replies
6h39m

£90 won't get you wasted in a restaurant in London.

janice1999
2 replies
8h27m

His brother's a Baron. Of course this class fails upwards. Only the poor plebs will pay the price while those in power award each other CBEs and ignore warnings from the working class about impending disaster. See also the post office injustice and the Grenfell Tower fire.

janice1999
0 replies
5h13m

Thanks, I'll check it out. One of my friends and his brothers all left Russia (before the recent war) because of the corruption. The most depressing part of his stories is how apathetic most people are and how there is so little hope for change there.

smcl
0 replies
7h43m

Hope that doesn't come back to bite him, I'm sure if he mentioned it in one of his streams any one of us in the community would've happily updated the page.

stuaxo
5 replies
8h7m

Starmers promise of very similar policies to the Tories, but operated more competently playing out.

On the other hand he doesn't handle bad press well, let's see how this goes.

smcl
4 replies
7h15m

This occurred before Labour took office - Hendy was the chair of Network Rail at the time. However as Starmer appointed him Transport Minister it'll be interesting to see what he does. I think it'll just be swept aside and ignored because they're too focussed on Austerity 2.0

rsynnott
3 replies
6h52m

Honestly I’d expect they just fire Hendy; only in the job a month, so low cost of replacement, and it’s a bad look.

smcl
2 replies
6h32m

You'd hope so but Starmer's a bit weird - seems to want to look like he's in charge (suspending the seven who voted against the government on the 2 child cap) so it wouldn't surprise me if he tries to brush it off and do nothing. The papers are largely all still with him and I haven't seen this story getting picked up outside Politico so it's possible they'll just agree to spike it and move on :-/

keyshapegeo99
1 replies
6h11m

Guardian are reporting on it now, so it's slowly trickling out.

smcl
0 replies
6h1m

Yeah I just saw now, that's good.

flanked-evergl
4 replies
4h6m

UK seems like one of the absolute worst places in the world to live. Why are there not more people moving out of the UK? Do they still think it can get better?

tim333
2 replies
3h51m

It's a bit like that quote about democracy - it's the worst place apart from all the other ones. Not where really is perfect. The population keeps going up here with people immigrating for what it's worth although we've had quite a lot of millionaires leaving and African asylum seekers arriving on dinghies which is perhaps not ideal.

flanked-evergl
1 replies
3h41m

It's a bit like that quote about democracy - it's the worst place apart from all the other ones.

No, it's way worse than most of the others. Anywhere in the Anglosphere or other parts of Europe is better. Most of Asia is better. Most of South America is better. Even some African countries are probably better. I would definitely move to Uganda, Botswana or South Africa before I ever set foot in the UK.

The population keeps going up here

If you promise anyone who arrives at your shore free healthcare, accommodation, food and some spending money, then of course your population will go up. Not sure how that makes anything better.

badpun
0 replies
2h47m

I’d say uk is probably in top10-top20 places in the world to live.

gchadwick
3 replies
8h5m

Worth noting the story here has subtly that the headline cannot accurately capture. For one I wouldn't say this is about raising safety concerns or whistle-blowing, it's about how the employer views employees talking to the media.

The engineer in question was sacked for stating 'You’re talking about thousands of people squished into that space. It’s not just uncomfortable, it’s not just unpleasant, it’s unsafe.' in a media interview (see https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/euston-trains-stati... looks like the unsafe part of that quote made the headline).

Here he was just amplifying already public information that the Office of Rail and Road had raised concerns and issued an improvement notice (which is reference in the article before he is quoted). I guess they hadn't actually declared it 'unsafe' though.

I think it is reasonable for employers to require employees don't go making negative comments in the media, though that is tempered by the public interest in raising the profile of safety concerns. Perhaps here the engineer felt no-one was taking the improvement notice seriously and needed more incentive to do so? Could also be he felt he wasn't trying to cause any upset at all and was simply stating what was already public known.

It does feel here that the minister that triggered the sacking was just being thin-skinned. He saw a newspaper headline that angered him and sought to take it out on someone. Perhaps some disciplinary action was warranted (maybe improvements were indeed underway and the engineer shouldn't go causing extra needless public alarm) but sacking him looks to be a big overreaction.

smcl
1 replies
7h36m

In this case it's a little more than just an employer/employee relationship. It's the head of a non-departmental government body (at the time Hendy lead Network Rail, he's now Minister for Transport) threatening to not award contracts to a railway services provider unless they terminate an employee who voiced safety concerns publicly. Notably these concerns were shared by the Office of Rail and Road (i.e. ... the government).

XCabbage
0 replies
1h56m

A "non-departmental government body" - more usually known in the press as a "quango" or "quasi-autonomous non-government body", because we cannot make up our mind in the UK about what things are part of the "government" and which are not. :)

b800h
0 replies
6h51m

The other point worth raising is that the employee has stated on Twitter that he had a media agreement with his employer that allowed him to speak independently (presumably because he runs a YouTube channel, as per the comments elsewhere on this thread).

smcl
0 replies
7h42m

You are correct, he's also been a guest on "Well There's Your Problem" (an engineering disasters podcast/channel) and TRASHFUTURE (UK tech/politics podcast) a few times.

red_admiral
0 replies
4h30m

This is what we got the last time safety culture in UK railways was in a serious mess: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladbroke_Grove_rail_crash

Some in the industry think the next such accident isn't too far off. Stampedes at Euston are a manageable problem by comparison.

boomskats
0 replies
6h30m

Would anyone care to speculate how something like this would potentially play out in another Western European country? If all the abuse of power and overstepping/targeting was unchallenged public knowledge, would there be more of a reaction?

arder
0 replies
6h26m

This really sets the government up for failure. The next time there's a tragedy on our rail system the question I'm going to ask is "Would this have happened if the person in charge took safety concerns seriously". This just makes Hendy's position totally untenable.

anentropic
0 replies
4h20m

This Hendy guy sounds like a classic shit manager, only concerned with saving face

XCabbage
0 replies
2h4m

Obviously, the retaliation is bad. Should disqualify Lord Hendy from his role.

But I would also like to make sense of what the actual risk alleged to exist in Euston is, and how Gareth Dennis or the ORR inspector thinks it should be mitigated. And I cannot figure it out, at all.

In Dennis's comments quoted in The Independent, for which he was fired, he attributes the risks at the station to the increased number of trains coming in and out of the station. That seems to imply that the crush or trample risk he perceives to exist is in the main lobby area of the station, not on the platforms or the ramps leading down to the platform gates, since if it were the latter then the risk would exist regardless of the number of trains coming in and out of the station.

This seemed surprising/implausible to me because all the dense crowds I've ever seen (and felt concerned about) in Euston have been on the ramps or the platforms, NOT in the lobby area which is massive. I struggle to imagine how a crush or stampede could ever happen anywhere besides the ramps and platforms. So I dug a bit further.

The press release associated with the improvement notice (https://www.orr.gov.uk/search-news/rail-regulator-requires-c...), on the other hand, says that over summer 2023, there were three instances of "crowding reaching unacceptable levels and a lack of crowd control in place" resulting in "minor injuries" with potential for worse. They also complain of a lack of risk assessments for two unspecified "pinch points" in the station "where crowding is most concentrated", inadequate "control measures", and unacceptably poor "layout" and "signage" to help with flow control.

The actual improvement notice, meanwhile, contains essentially no detail (https://orrprdpubreg1.blob.core.windows.net/docs/I-NWM-20230...), just some fairly meaningless boilerplate. The entire explanation of the problem is "You have failed to implement, so far as is reasonably practicable, effective measures to prevent risks to health and safety of passengers (and other persons at the station) during passenger surges and overcrowding events at London Euston Station" and the remedy demanded is that the station needs to do a risk assessment and then implement whatever measures they come up with in the risk assessment.

My best guess at what this is all about, possibly completely wrong, is as follows:

* the two "pinch points" are two of the ramps, probably the one leading down to platforms 8/9/10/11 and the one leading down to platforms 12/13/14/15, which in my personal experience of the station are where most of the big surges happen

* the injuries happened due to crowds running down the ramps to the platforms once the platform number for their train got announced, either to beat other passengers to the seats or out of fear that they would not get on a late-arriving train before it departed at all

* the risk assessment concluded that the station should put up signs telling people not to run, and then they did that (I can't find any reporting about it, but if my memory serves me right, then those signs on the ramps at Euston appeared late last year which fits with the timeline)

So, IF I'm guessing correctly, there's probably a real stampede risk, with minor examples having already played out, but it's totally unrelated to the number of trains or the crowding in the lobby, the fired "whistleblower" is basically full of shit for suggesting a problem stemming from a larger number of trains, and the supposed "fix" is also meaningless compliance bullshit that will have no effect.

Of course, again, I could be guessing totally wrong; there isn't enough detail in the public documents or reporting for us to tell. So I publicly asked Gareth, the guy who got fired, to explain his concerns in more detail or point me to somewhere with detail. He... responded with indignation and contempt, pointed me to the Improvement Notice for one reason (the document with no detail about the problems, just a one sentence description that is probably copied and pasted boilerplate and makes no reference to any of the specific circumstances at Euston), then suggested I was mentally unwell in some way and blocked me. What a dickhead. Here's the end of the thread; I'd be grateful if someone not blocked by Gareth would stick it into Threadreader and post a link here so people not on X can read it: https://x.com/GarethDennis/status/1829179489043226778

I find it hard to fathom why someone sincerely concerned with safety would behave in this way - making unactionably vague complaints that a station is unsafe, then refusing to elaborate and lashing out at anyone interested in the detail for daring to question him. After the displeasure of interacting with the guy, it seems to me that this story has no heroes. But still, no matter how much of a dick he is or how useless his criticism was, it doesn't justify the firing. If you want a culture in which people feel safe speaking up about concerns, you have to indulge even stupid and incoherent concerns made by dicks; if you don't, everybody with something substantive to say will quite reasonably fear they will be viewed and treated in the same way you treated the dick.

Kydlaw
0 replies
8h31m

I personally find this information frightening... we are now in a world where management no longer even listens to its engineers or technical experts when they warn of serious dangers. Obviously everyone thinks of Boeing, and today it's “only” a train station, but imagine if the same culture developed in an industrial chemical plant or a nuclear power station?

Where do you go? What do you do? Unless you have an Engineer Association or an Union to back you up, you are doomed to be crushed by your upper management and beyond...

Havoc
0 replies
5h47m

Politics seems to attract the worst type of people