Doug Paulley's blog

disability, data protection, activism and other such

“Why don’t you wait?”

Posted on by Doug Paulley

Laurence Clark reckons that wheelchair users travel 4th class on Britain’s railways, somewhere below the catering trolley. I think I experienced this today.

I was traveling from York to London by Grand Central. I generally rate Grand Central, an open access operator providing a niche York to London non-stop service, also providing the Mackems with a link to civilisation in London 🙂 (actually, I suspect it may be the other way round!) Even if they have been bought by soul sapping über-giant Arriva.

Today was different, though. I dutifully bought my tickets and booked wheelchair space and assistance with them 48 hours in advance, as we are sadly forced to do, and duly turned up the requisite 30 minutes early to allow general pfaf time.

An excellent, solicitous young gentleman from VTEC set up the ramp onto the train a few minutes before it was due to board, but I discovered he’d set it up at the wrong door – which was not his fault because Grand Central had neglected to employ the RVAR mandated and widely used space hopper sign indicating the correct door for the wheelchair space.

image

Never mind, it’s a few minutes early, so still time to discover that there was a pushchair with baby and two suitcases in the wheelchair space. On I get, and it’s left to me to shout to get them moved – even though there was a sign stating the space was for a wheelchair, and even though I’d booked the space. The mother was noticeably sniffy and unpleasant at having to move.

Of course, I couldn’t even get to the wheelchair space, because passengers had left another buggy and two suitcases in the vestibule so I couldn’t pass, leaving me in the doorway area. Nobody arrived to claim these, even though I shouted down the carriage. I was tempted to offload them and call the police as unattended luggage, but in the end I sat in the doorway and refused to move to allow the train doors to shut until they were shifted.

Now I’m a firm believer in public transport and in it being available to all, and I know it’s difficult for parents with buggies. I’m up for adaptations for buggy users, and I don’t mind wheelchair spaces being used by buggy users, when they aren’t required for wheelchair users. But it’s the only space I can travel in! I booked the space. It wouldn’t be considered acceptable for somebody to leave their buggy on reserved chairs, so why is it OK in the wheelchair space? And when politely asked to move, why should I be subject to sniffy pissed-offness from the mother concerned, and exasperation from the guard for daring to refuse to move until I could get into the carriage?

Yeah, the guard. I’d booked the space, and I’d booked assistance. She knew I’d be getting on. So, the question arises, why did she not ask the woman to move her buggy BEFORE I got on? Being proactive would have made me feel a bit less like an inconvenient afterthought, reduced inter-passenger tension and been generally helpful. But maybe I’m asking too much. Et tu, Grand Central?

So I continue my journey as an afterthought, hemmed into the space by pushchairs and luggage blocking the aisle, when ten minutes before arriving into London, I decided to go to the loo before braving the Underground in my wheelchair. It was engaged, so I waited, and my trusty carer (the wonderful Mike) asked the buggy owners to move their charges so I could physically get to the toilet.

Then the upsetting incident happened. I’d coped with everything up to now, the shabby treatment, the huffiness, the accusing looks for daring to want to use the wheelchair space, but it was four tiny whispered words, so quiet I thought I had misheard, but then repeated. They emanated from a businessman in the seat opposite, who had been troubled to move his luggage out of the wheelchair space. These four, tiny, innocuous words?

Why don’t you wait?

That’s all it took to finally get to me, the idea that I should wait till I got off before going to the loo, that I was being unreasonable by wanting people to shift their buggies so I could get from the wheelchair space to the wheelchair accessible toilet on the train, to avoid having to navigate and find one on the station.

Mike was marvelous. I sat there in hurt silence, unable to cope with this small-minded berk shoving his nose in to a situation that didn’t involve him with his snidey sotto vice unhelpful comment; he asked what the problem was, and that all I wanted was to use the loo like 200 other train passengers. (He also got in an excellent jibe afterwards, by telling the guy that the loo was free when I’d left. Lol.)

I wonder: if Grand Central had treated me like a human being by e.g. affixing the wheelchair sign by the exterior door, ensuring the wheelchair space was free for me and keeping the entrance clear, would this guy have kept his trap shut? I wonder…

It’s amazing how it’s not the sign, the space or the corridor that got me (I’m used to those), it was those four whispered, snidey, demeaning words that brought home just how much of an unreasonable inconvenience I was perceived as. It’s these four seemingly innocuous words that will ring in my brain:

Why don’t you wait?

Leonard Cheshire advertise for rehab workers at less than the Living Wage

Posted on by Doug Paulley

This advert for a rehabilitation worker demonstrates how Leonard Cheshire underpay their staff.

It’s for a rehabilitation worker in a specialist acquired brain injury (ABI) unit. Think head injuries from motorbike accidents, severe strokes and so on. Pretty specialist and full on work, in my view. The responsibilities include giving out medication, handling challenging behaviour, undertaking clinical interventions as directed by senior staff and so on.

The weekday pay is £7.16 per hour, or £7.41 for people with a relevant NVQ. (There is a 20% uplift for night and weekend work.)

The Living Wage is £7.85.

How can it possibly be right that Leonard Cheshire pay carers taking on this amount of responsibility, this commitment and making such a difference to people with severe brain injuries less than the living wage?

Pissing Off A Paulley

Posted on by Doug Paulley

I went on a little rail jaunt today. As some people will know, I have been not doing too well recently and I needed this to go well. I was doing this fantastic rail tour – plus the trip from Wetherby and back. 5:20am set off…

This rail tour requires an unusual ticket: the Ffestiniog Round Robin. I have previously had difficulties buying this in Leeds station as the ticket office staff don’t know how to issue it (eventually resulting in apologies and compensation) So I thought I’d pre-empt this by tweeting  Northern Rail.

No prizes for guessing what happened when I arrived at the ticket window at 05:40. The woman behind the counter (who had zero customer service skills and a moribund attitude) was ineffectually pawing at the screen like a slack-jawed luddite. She had never heard of such a ticket. She went away and got the supervisor. The supervisor had never heard of such a ticket. It could not be found anywhere throughout the whole computer system. (I was SO glad I tweeted to make sure that they were well-prepared.) In the end, I suggested they tried “Ffestiniog Round Robin” as a destination as opposed to a ranger / rover. This worked, but they still couldn’t issue the ticket until I suggested setting the From station as Whitchurch. Finally they issued my ticket. 20 minutes later.

Throughout the whole thing, the woman behind the counter gave every impression that I was the problem; she never apologised once. (Her boss did, very briefly.)

To rub salt into the wounds, when I remonstrated with Northern Rail on Twitter:


Yeah thanks, that made everything feel better.

At Llandudno Junction, on getting on the train, this greeted me,

2015-06-12 10.25.302015-06-12 10.44.49

Ah right, it’s not a wheelchair space, it’s a wheelchair, buggy and cycle space. That’s why there isn’t any indication at all in the “omni-space” that it is, in fact, meant for wheelchair users. Obviously the Rail Vehicle Accessibility Regulations is irrelevant.

Where a train consists of a number of regulated rail vehicles shown in column A there shall be in that train not less than the number of wheelchair spaces shown in column B opposite that number of vehicles;

Wait, what’s this? They are wheelchair spaces? But there’s no signs!

a sign conforming to diagram C in the Schedule shall be marked on the fixed structure.

One has to wonder if “diagram C in the Schedule” creates an optical illusion by which the sign looks amazingly like a cupholder?

uksi_19982456_en_003Hmmm. Not terribly cupholderish.

Later, the next Arriva train: Porthmadog to Shrewsbury, a 3.15 hour epic. This train was ROASTING. It was so hot and hazy and uncomfortable that other passengers were stripping off to the waist. The air conditioning was broken. I don’t do well in the heat, partly because I’m fat, but also because of my impairment. It was most uncomfortable being stuck in an overheated carriage all that time.

What’s more, the interior door to the carriage wouldn’t shut. The conductor had opened the three postage-stamp sized windows by the fraction of an inch allowed by their mechanisms, so despite getting about as much fresh air as being coughed upon by an asthmatic field mouse, the noise was enough to resonate in my hearing aids and drive me crazy. Perfect.

Other passengers could move to the two delightfully quiet and frosty carriages with working air conditioning that joined us at Machynlleth. I obviously could not.

The pièce de résistance of the whole day is demonstrated by the following phone conversation.

I had a teensie bevvie or two on the way round; and some time after Shrewsbury’s platform staff helped me into the wheelchair space on the next train nature took its toll and I needed to pay a call. But the toilet was engaged. It had apparently been engaged for a very long time. I sent trusty 1:1 carer Mike to find the train guard, who went to see the driver to check if the toilet was out-of-order. It was; it turns out that the driver was aware of this fact but hadn’t bothered to tell the guard, the station staff or apparently anybody else.

The guard (who was excellent) unlocked the toilet. It was entirely clear why it had been locked out of use. (I won’t go into detail.) So what to do? Unlike other passengers, I couldn’t get to any other toilet. The only other option: to get off the train at the next stop and use the station toilet – but the guard told me the train would leave without me. No way. I’d already been travelling 14 hours at that point. I wasn’t going to catch a later train, thus missing my connection, have my oh-so-carefully booked assistance stuffed up.

This therefore resulted in the above gunfight in the OK corral.

In the end, common sense prevailed. Arriva Trains Wales‘ control room were still in a tizzy, but this wonderful guard had (ultra vires) contacted the next station, discovered that there were toilets directly outside where the train would stop (which weren’t fully accessible but that I could at least get in), had asked for help from the platform staff, and had decided to allow me to get off to rush to the loo and back. Which I did.

Other passengers congratulated me on my turn of speed; smoke was coming from my tyres; Mike did a Linford Christie impression, and the passengers commented that actually, I had taken less time than if there was a crowd trying to get on, or someone with a bicycle. We arrived in Manchester early.

Why should all this be necessary, though? All for a simple call of nature?!

Of course, as expected, to top it off the assistance staff didn’t turn up at Manchester to get me off that train or onto another. (Thanks, Network Rail.) Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose – this is sady not uncommon, particularly at Manchester.