Rail passengers: Guilty until proved innocent

Years ago I watched an Eric Sykes comedy about people who wear uniforms. Put a peaked cap on someone, said Sykes, and you give him ideas above his station. Even the most ineffectual little chap becomes a parade ground sergeant.

The guard on my train last night certainly had ideas above his station - that station being Leeds. Last year they installed automatic ticket barriers there, which, if you use them often enough, eventually wipe the ink off your ticket. My annual season pass still has six months to run but it's already had to be replaced because the machines wore it out.

Nevertheless, it's still a valid ticket and the machines still read the magnetic strip on the back of it.

But that wasn't good enough for last night's guard. He couldn't read it, he said, so he confiscated it.

That's right - he took my £700 ticket with six months still to run - and kept it.

The guard - let's call him Conductor 3224, since that's how he identified himself - said he'd need to take my name and address. Why, I demanded? The ticket is valid and it's hardly my fault if your machine's rubbed the ink off it.

I had a responsibility to ensure it was readable, he lectured me. Those were the rules. They know all about rules, men in uniform.

But having already been a victim of identity fraud once this year, I wasn't about to shout out my name and address in a crowded train for him to scribble into a tatty notebook and then do goodness-knows-what with. How would that square with my rights under the Data Protection Act? (You see - rules work both ways.)

So I was deprived of my season pass. This morning I had to buy a ticket to get to work, then queue for 20 minutes to apply for a new pass - which they couldn't issue because - guess what? - Conductor 3224 still had my ticket.

I called Northern Rail's press office about this. Why do these jumped up, uniform-wearing little twits persist in criminalising the fare paying public, I asked, in slightly fewer words.

Ah, fare dodging is a big problem - we have to vigilant, said the press officer.

So what? Shoplifting is a big problem, too, but I don't have to run a gauntlet of accusing looks from checkout staff every time I go to Tesco. They know how to handle their customers.

It's a lesson the rail industry, and much of the rest of the public sector, has never learned. As a regular, fare-paying customer of Northern Rail, I expect - and frankly deserve - to be treated better than that. If the ticket machines don't work - and they don't - Northern Rail should acknowledge the problem and take steps to fix it. If the ink has rubbed off (and honestly, is that truly a problem anyway?) customers should be offered replacements without cost or inconvenience.

But that's a side issue anyway. The real problem is this attitude among guards like Conductor 3224 that customers are guilty of something until proved innocent; that passengers are sitting targets, to be lectured and penalised when the mood takes them; that their peaked cap invests them with a status somehow superior to the rest of us. If you're reading this, Eric Sykes, you were right.

Of course, not all guards are as officious as Conductor 3224, but neither is he the only one. So, for all of them, across the entire rail industry - it's my turn for a lecture...

WHEN you and your colleagues can make the trains run on time, all the time...
WHEN you can provide enough seats for everyone to have one...
WHEN you can provide rolling stock that doesn't look like it's been shipped over from a coal yard in Eastern Europe...
WHEN you start to run a Hoover over the carriages now and again...
WHEN you stop charging hundreds of pounds over the odds for tickets that haven't been booked far enough in advance...
WHEN you take an enforced course in customer relations...
THEN, and only then, can you start lecturing ME on how to use the trains.