Why the small stuff matters
How small must a story be before it no longer warrants your attention? I suspect I’m about to test that question but hope, in the process, to make a bigger point that might be worth your consideration. This might be a tiny detail in life’s grand scheme but, listen, the details do matter because they speak to a larger problem, that takes in central government and its treatment of the regions and the failure of the market to deliver public services.
Earlestown is a small town with few claims to fame but we sit on the world’s oldest passenger line, the Liverpool to Manchester Railway. We also have the world’s oldest railway building that’s still in use, though that’s a bit of a stretch since it’s the old booking office, long since abandoned, and its roof still shelters passengers from the rain. We are also a junction, with five platforms, and back on the 7th of May, I was travelling from Platform 5 when I spotted a used syringe with its needle exposed on the other side of the platform fence. Thinking that somebody might care, I immediately tweeted a photo out to Arriva Trains Wales and Northern Trains. To their credit, Northern’s customer service account, Northern Assist, replied: “Very sorry to see this, David. We have asked our facilities team to attend to this, thank you for letting us know ^TW”
The “TW”, I assume, is the person on the other end of the Twitter account.
I thought no more about it until 30th May when I again travelled and again saw the syringe. Again, I reported it to Northern Trains who were again quick to reply.
“Hello David, thank you very much for updating us on this, I have arranged for this to be removed today. Apologies that this was not resolved earlier. ^VR”
It was June the 3rd when I was next on my way into Warrington. This time I deliberately went to check to see if the syringe had been removed. Of course, it hadn’t…
https://twitter.com/DavidWaywell/status/1135547388142206977
Again, customer services were quick with their assurances.
“Hi David, very sorry to see this. We have chased this with our faults team, thank you for bringing this to our attention ^TW”
This time, however, in the course of chasing this up, somebody had tagged in my local councillors, one of whom immediately asked the council for help. The council’s reply: “Hello as it’s on @northernassist property we won’t be able to move it as it is on private property”
Merseyside Police gave similar advice. “Hi, as this is on private land, the owner of the land would be responsible for this.”
And, yes, this is a trivial story for all of us except the poor soul who eventually gets spiked by that needle, on the other side of a fence next to a busy platform but in a place where any adventurous child might run to play hide and seek.
The needle is there today.
This story explains a lot about life up here in the North West where, recently, the mayors of Manchester and Liverpool asked that Northern Trains be stripped of its contract for its “unreliable and overcrowded” service.
After a promising start – and I do remember the utter misery of the service before privatisation – our train services are now in a dire state. This also extends to their non-functioning relationship with the public.
Northern Trains is destined to fail and, perhaps, the sooner it does, the sooner somebody might begin to care. The market works when those operating in it remember that its primary motive, to make a profit, is only viable if it does those things that a public operation would be obliged to do. Indeed, if you believe in markets, then you must also believe that these are the things they simply must get right. They must care about the safety of the public and not use customers services to buffer the company from justified complaints. There can be no responsibility when everything is done anonymously; never a name to take the blame for a cancelled service or a train leaving passengers on a platform because it’s already running to capacity. This isn’t just about a needle but a systemic failure of a company that can’t even get the simple things right. This isn’t the fault of “TW” or “VR” but a company to blame for “15,800 full cancellations and 18,696 part cancellations in the year to May 2019” (The Guardian, 29th May).
At some point, the current or future Secretary of State for Transport will have to do something to help those of us in the North West with a barely functioning service. The delays and overcrowded trains impact our lives daily, especially those of us working in the two big cities. They are a nuisance. Abandoned heroin needles, however, are something else altogether.