to think that this was ridiculous...

[MeltedAdventCalendarChocolates]

Sure he probably was lying. Maybe he wasn't and should have had the maturity to handle it differently, who knows, but for a random stranger to handle this KID in this way is horrific!

AIBU?

Bloody phone

A certain look of sports clothes where the only sport undertaken in running away

Apologies I do tend to get riled up as I have to deal with them every day usually at unsocial able hours so I am not the most sympathetic or rational about them

well his youtube page has videos a couple of years old of him in a navy trackie and white trainers so he is a ned that has gone up in the world

Obviously upgraded now he's a student ;)

uncomftable to watch and uncomftable to watch for the people on the train .

Maybe your neds are posher than our neds then. Or neds would give a guy wearing a bobble hat a kicking. They rarely go out alone as well, especially on a train. Big man looked more nedlike than younger, smaller fare dodging man.

Ordinary members of the public can not just grab people and throw them about. It could be you next but that' would be ok with then.

i think Big Man clearly looked like a bouncer who got a bit carried away and thought it was a situation like where they call for a Doctor on a plane :)

Big Man nearly took down the conductor and a mum with kids to say nothing of possible serious injury tonthe young man. Total balls up all for the want of a ticket.

noone on the train complained and the guy himself is laughing about it so I think you lot are getting more upset about it than he is.

Oh someone PM me the BookFace page please? I could do with a good laugh this morning.

Me toooo!!!

I'm with Jasper. And if Big Man gets a Big Fine, I'll help him pay it.

The debate on this thread seems to boil down to 2 perspectives:

1. Force should never be used against any individual, except by authorised people, no matter how great the inconvenience to the general public of private individuals not using force in a situation. This is because if taken to its logical extreme, tolerating the use of force by private individuals would lead to vigilantism and to domination of weaker people by those physically stronger.

2. It is OK for a private individual to use force in a situation where the good of the general population is threatened by someone who is breaking the law. This is because private individuals are presumed to have sufficient judgement and social consciousness to be able to distinguish between moderate force in the social interest and arbitrary violence in the name of domination and personal power.

When played out in public, both of these positions are open to abuse.

2. is open to abuse by individuals who might take advantage of the support of others around them to bully or intimidate weaker people (mob rule).

But 1) is equally open to abuse, by individuals who recognise that if no official 'authority' is nearby, they can more or less do as they like and no-one is empowered to stop them, as the general presumption is that no-one is capable of making a judgement about 'reasonable force' except those in authority. This leaves large sections of the population vulnerable to inconvenience, threat and even attack by a selfish minority who will do as they please simply because private individuals don't feel able to take action to stop them.

While 1) might work in an ideal world with a zillion police officers on hand to adjudicate every minor infraction, we don't live in an ideal world so personally I'm more in favour of 2). I prefer to think of the majority of society as capable of some judgement and as participants in the social contract rather than passive subjects of it, powerless to act unless decked out with the proper training and a high-vis vest.

like this?

or like this?

So. The question still remains at what point is it OK for a member of the public to intervene. And how much force should he/she be permitted to use?

Say I seem someone dropping some litter (something that makes me mad as hell when i see someone doing it). Is it OK for me to approach them and demand in an aggressive manner that they pick it up? And when they don't is it OK to grab hold of them and force them to pick up the offending piece of litter and march them to the nearest litter bin? Would passers-by applaud me

How about Vandalism? Personally I find those 2 things a great deal worse than failing to pay for a ticket.

And assuming that those scenarios would be acceptable, what level of assault would bother you? Would it be OK if I punched the offender - just once - to enforce compliance? And then again because they were still protesting?

Surely that is a choice that those people made when they pissed me off?

It is not about the ticket dodger - he might well be the worst 'ned' in the history of the world but that is totally besides the point. It is about some fairly useless ticket inspector who was inviting the other passengers to intervene by his repeated comments about the other passengers getting fed up, and a self-righteous thug who wanted to play SuperHero for the day and his reaction to a minor misdemeanour which was nothing to do with him.

"It is not about the ticket"

I think it rather is, actually.

He was removed from the train in a not-so-gentle manner. That is exactly how the police would have removed him, had they been called. There were no punches thrown, no headbutts, no kicks... Just a swift removal of a PITA. I can get all hand-wringey over that. Mainly because I'm sick of this attitude "I'm a young person, therefore everyone is intimidated by me and will do precisely nothing about me"

Call me over-the-top but people's willingness to do nothing when problems occur are a massive part in the breakdown of respect/community. People operate by this code of being able to do what the hell they like because there are no consequences or minimal consequences.

The best consequence for his behaviour would have been to get the police to meet the train, and for Scotrail to ban him from their trains. I don't generally walk on by and have intervened to help people even when violence was a possibility but I was uncomfortable with that video. The outcome could have been much worse for all involved, and it really could have been handled better.

"but people's willingness to do nothing when problems occur are a massive part in the breakdown of respect/community"

The reasons for breakdown in community are much more complex. And I doubt that any 'community' would have included a train carriage even in the good old days - it would always have been a weird limbo land where people felt insecure. A general sense of wanting to help other people would have resulted in someone offering to pay the man's ticket (perhaps he didn't have the money, who knows?). But that wouldn't have satisfied anyone's sense of outrage sufficiently. The man didn't intervene because the ticket dodger was hurting someone or threatening to do so, or doing any massive damage to a community, he intervened because he was being inconvenienced. His response was not a high-minded desire to benefit the community - he just wanted to get home.

And I fail to see why adding assault to the mix adds to any sense of community or respect for others.

Isn't it a shame that when someone finally breaks down the barriers and intervenes in a human drama being played out in front of them, they intervene to offer violence instead of support and help.

The point I was making was about exercising judgement in the moment, not about creating general rules in the abstract for what people are 'permitted' to do, beyond very basic principles.

As I said though there are two very different philosophies in play on this thread. Those who take a view roughly along the lines of 1) as I described it will see assault and an inappropriate level of violence from someone not authorised to use violence. Those whose view accords more with 2) will see a citizen using reasonable force to help prevent a lot of other people being inconvenienced by one selfish individual.

Yes, yes support and help someone who considers himself to be above the rules that the rest of us spend our lives adhering to. We may as well all NOT bother, then. If he'd stated that he'd lost his money/got no money instead of acting like Mr Big Bollocks, I daresay he would have been met with more "support".

"The reasons for breakdown in community are much more complex."

That's why I said "part of the reason", not the only reason.

Did we actually hear the conversation right from the start though? It struck me that the ticket collector wasn't exactly in conciliatory mood so it might be just a bit of arsey bravado when he couldn't pay.

However it has all made me very glad I rarely use public transport. If people are either all arsey or aggressive.

He wasn't a kid and his attitude was completely unacceptable. Why should he not have to pay a fare when everyone else had?

That being said, the other passenger was completely and utterly out of line man handling him in that way. I don't think the conductor handled it very well but I do have sympathy for him because it was clearly a volatile situation.

Six of one and half a dozen of the other in my humble cliched opinion.

"So. The question still remains at what point is it OK for a member of the public to intervene. And how much force should he/she be permitted to use?"

from my perspective force becomes ok at the point where violence is threatened or they reasonably believe that the person is going to use violence/force.
To stop the person from committing a crime/ engaging in criminal activity.