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#Traingate – Who’s Right?

25 August 2016

By Joseph

Perhaps you’ve seen #traingate trending on social media and wondered what all the fuss is about. After all, millions of us hop on trains every day, so why exactly is this so newsworthy? Basically, whilst travelling on a Virgin Trains East Coast from London to Newcastle (I know, we’re not used to politicians actually coming up north), Jeremy Corbyn appeared in a video featuring him sat on the floor of the train claiming that the train was “ram-packed” before Virgin Trains (and Richard Branson himself) promptly told him he was lying (or rather sitting) about the whole thing by releasing CCTV footage from on board the train depicting Mr Corbyn walking past rows of unoccupied seats.

Corbyn used the video as an opportunity to highlight the need to renationalise the rail network – a motion that 58% of the public support. Indeed, from 2009 to 2015, after National Express defaulted on the East Coast franchise, the franchise was temporarily brought back into public ownership and paid back over £1 billion to the government. Following its successful stint in public hands, the East Coast franchise was handed back over to private companies, with Virgin Trains East Coast (A joint venture between Stagecoach Group and Virgin Trains) taking over operations from March 2015.  The company is currently involved in an ongoing industrial dispute with rail unions over working conditions, job cuts and safety.

Anyhow, having released the footage showing Corbyn walk past empty seats, Virgin East Coast was quick to make it out as though Jeremy was staging a publicity stunt. Whereas in reality, although Corbyn did walk past a number of empty seats, they were all quite clearly reserved, as per the paper tickets on top of the seats, meaning that Jeremy couldn’t sit in them – surely Virgin would know that. Of course, given that the train from London to Newcastle would not have stopped regularly, Jeremy probably could have sat in one of the reserved seats until the reservations came into force (for example, if the seats are only reserved between York and Newcastle, it would be acceptable to sit there as far as York). Emphasising his humility, Corbyn refused an offer of a first class upgrade from the train crew, who he praised incessantly, and only managed to find a ‘unreserved’ seat after a family were moved/upgraded elsewhere on the train – perhaps so staff could make room for Corbyn.

However you see it, Corbyn has brought to the agenda the plight of millions of commuters everyday, where they’re forced to fork out thousands of pounds a year for season tickets, yet 1 in 3 people travelling into London doesn’t even get a seat.

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