It’s high time we reminded the inspectors

GIVEN THAT its reputation is in shreds, you’d have thought that Northern, as it goes through its death throes as the region’s principal rail operator, would be moving heaven and earth to win back the hearts and minds of all those its lamentable service has disenfranchised

But its latest attempt at public relations demonstrates that it has learned nothing from the multiple fiascos of strikes, botched timetables, breakdowns and general incompetence that have defined its operation.

It ought to be offering free travel weekends to begin to make amends for the damage its late-running services continue to wreak on so many lives. Instead, it has fallen back on its old standby of criminalising the passengers, with a stern press release “reminding” children to buy tickets for their journeys. This travesty comes less than two years after Northern was supposed to have abandoned its controversial practice of handing out “telling-off ” notices to people as they queued to buy tickets after getting off their trains. It had stood accused of bullying vulnerable passengers by tricking them into joining the queue and then fining them.

A 16-year-old girl who was bundled out of Leeds

City Station on her first day at college had been wrongly told: “Right then, little miss – you’re breaking the law” by one high-handed oik. When the girl’s father complained to his MP of intimidation, the story was echoed on social media by other passengers who had also been picked out as “soft targets”.

The victims had not been trying to avoid paying. They were queuing for their tickets with money in their hands. Fast-forward to today and we find Northern crowing about its inspectors stopping and questioning children in West Yorkshire as they make their way to and from school. Some are being refused travel. Parents are being summoned to pick them up. The company is threatening “very serious consequences in the form of a criminal record”.

Northern claims it is acting in the name of “revenue protection”. And of course, fare-dodging – if indeed there has been any here – is not to be encouraged.

But that’s not the point.

Its action is bullying by any