Q. "How much did the Pride paint job on that train cost?" - A. "We won't tell you because you don't believe that TWAW"

[Another2Cats]

Yes, this actually happened.

It's quite a long story but the TL;DR is just as in the title.

I follow someone on Twitter @ MouseInTheCourt and they tweeted about this earlier today.

The East Coast Main Line is the route that runs from London Kings Cross up to Edinburgh. It used to be run by Virgin Trains but they couldn't make it work so the route was returned to government control and a new, government owned, body called LNER was set up.

(totally irrelevant, they just copied the name of the company that used to own the route from 1923 to 1948 - ironically, that company, one of the "Big Four" was also set up by the government under the Railways Act 1921).

Anyway, last year LNER released a press release saying that they were going to have a train painted specially in "Pride" colours.

Together For a Summer Of Pride: LNER Launches Azuma Train Celebrating Pride

A few months later someone requested information about the process and costs of decorating a train in Pride colours. She also asked about the processes for selecting train designs more generally and about plans for future designs.

Since LNER is owned by the Department for Transport and so is a public body, this was done by way of an FOI (Freedom of Information) request.

LNER said that it did not hold the information requested. The woman then put the case that a significant sum of money had been spent and it was therefore odd that there appeared to be no paper trail explaining how the decision had been made.

LNER then trawled through her social media posts and suddenly declared that she was "vexatious".

Their reason for doing this was that, among other similar complaints, her tweets:

"... indicates a possible intent to challenge or disrupt initiatives related to transgender inclusion and to promote a binary view of sex and gender."

Her position was then given as follows:

16. The complainant accepted that she had a binary view of sex, but she argued that this was a protected belief – as determined by the Employment Appeal Tribunal in the Forstater case. The public authority had therefore, in her view, unlawfully discriminated against her because it had refused to provide information, that she would otherwise have been entitled to receive, due to her beliefs.

17 She was unhappy that the public authority had conducted a trawl of her social media postings before completing its review. She argued that it was unfair for the public authority to restrict her right to access information simply because she had used her social media accounts to promote her own beliefs – beliefs which she is entitled to hold. More generally she considered it unreasonably restrictive for a public authority to grant or withhold information based on its opinion of the requester’s social media postings. Nor was it reasonable for the public authority to expect her to shift her entire system of beliefs in order to access information.

[...]

19 The public authority’s original press release had highlighted its “commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives for colleagues, customers and communities throughout the year.” There was, she argued, a public interest in understanding why the public authority had chosen this particular cause ahead of other worthy causes, what the decision-making process was and what plans it had to celebrate other causes in future.
.

Not surprisingly, the ICO came down on the side of this woman.

Full judgment here (pdf):

https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKICO/2024/305669.pdf

Well, of course not, because (to state the blindingly obvious) you can't tell simply by looking at someone whether they're same-sex attracted. Obviously in certain circumstances the way they dress or speak may give a clue, but day to day in a work setting mostly it's not obvious and it's entirely irrelevant. This conflation of drag queens with LGBTQ+ baffles me. Since when did male cross-dressers become the most oppressed group on the planet? We can all read about what's happening to women in Afghanistan, Iran and Sudan. People with disabilities all over the globe get a very raw deal. People in all sorts of ethnic and religious minorities are being killed by people from other groups.

<moves on from tearing hair out to banging forehead on the wall>

The Telegraph article quotes the price of one published fare to London from Newcastle as being over £700 !!! They really have lost sight of what being inclusive means. Pricing the customer out of being able to use the service whilst spending ludicrous amounts on a paint job is the opposite of inclusive.

Have you seen the price of tickets?

I see you have. Hardly inclusive are they?

I've just read the judgement.
It's made my morning.
Esp, as a PP noted, para 27.

Absolutely not inclusive

I expect the next part of the plan is to get people to tick a box before they can buy a ticket online, agreeing that TWAW, TMAM & non-binary people are valid.

I often wonder what overseas visitors make of our rail service. Not much, is the short answer. Getting back to a position where you buy a ticket to travel from station A to station B and can use any train making that trip without having to check first whether your ticket entitles you to use that company's trains would be a good start.

My elderly parents really struggle trying to get train tickets these days. They can’t manage the internet so have to take the train into the nearest city 15 miles away to find a ticket office. They could buy a ticket on the day on the local train but you miss out on cheaper tickets that way and can’t reserve a seat on a long-distance train (there is no way they could stand) or book assistance. Even if they could buy online, online booking sites don’t allow you the flexibility to request longer connecting times to give them time to make their slow walk across platforms. They are on the cusp of not being able to travel to visit me anymore anyway but the trains put so many extra barriers in the way.

Well yes, but if they actually wanted to represent LGB people, couldn't they have perfectly normal looking people wearing T-shirts saying "out and proud" or "proud to be a lesbian" or something along those lines? You know, something more representative of the hundreds of thousands of same sex attracted people in the UK who live very ordinary lives, just like everyone else, and just want equal acceptance of their relationships?

Decades ago you could buy train tickets from a travel agent. I just googled if you still can, and it's a little ambiguous. And maybe just for long distance journeys. But it might be worth checking if they have one local to them who does it.

Someone on TwiX has, depressingly, posted this:

The LNER Head of Diversity sent an all-staff email advising employees to use the counselling helpline if they were distressed by the outcome of the ruling and reaffirmed LNER’s “inclusiveness”.

Ah so it's the opposite of diversity then. Only those with a particular view. Not inclusive and not diverse. Man should be sacked responding in such an inappropriate way.

It must feel a very hostile work environment for any employees who are sex realist.

Yes, if anyone is distressed that we were stopped from discriminating again this hateful terf...hugs.

They can't see themselves, can they?

No concern for the very real distress experienced by women having to put up with men in their single sex spaces though.

Oh dear, MissScarlett....remember women don't matter.

Transactivists have absolutely nowhere to go put poor me.

It doesn't wash for most people anywhere, but it's certainly won't wash with train users when they realise it's because LNER have spent £60k on painting a rainbow on a train.

LGB people fought for the right to be treated as normal people who just wanted to live their lives with a same sex partner. It seems to be the complete opposite now and to be LGB means making a big a show of yourself as possible and outrageous flamboyant stereotypes.

It strikes me as though LGB people are being marketed as a new version of the Victorian freak show and this is supposed to be empowering somehow. Who hijacked the fight for acceptance and turned it into a garish display far removed from the original intent? I am not saying for one second that LGB people should hide away or be ashamed of their sexuality, just that the ordinary people seem to have been forgotten in the corporate wankfest that Pride and the like have turned into.

@TWETMIRF
But it’s not actually about LGBs any more, it’s all about the TQ+ who have an agenda that is the polar opposite of just wanting to get on with their lives.

Nobody minds missing their interview / connection / flight so long as they are on a rainbow coloured train.

Well put.

"They are on the cusp of not being able to travel to visit me anymore"

Would it not be possible for you to purchase a physical ticket at your local station and then post it to your parents? Or you could get an eticket and the print it out if you have a printer and then post that to your parents.

For example, when I travel to London I pay for the ticket online in advance and then collect it in person at any station that has a ticket machine (you can choose any station you like).

"...online booking sites don’t allow you the flexibility to request longer connecting times"

When I go to London I get an Off-Peak Day Return which lets you go on any off peak train so you are not limited to any one particular train.

There are ways we could get a ticket to them though I am not sure I want them doing the journey anymore, much as I would love to see them, because even a straightforward journey would take it out of them. But the fact that ways round barriers have to be found, or there are worries how they would manage to get on a coach should bus replacement be needed, just goes to show how un-inclusive LNER are. Older people and disabled people also rely on public transport more as driving is not an option. Yet they would rather paint trains for a privileged group than address the barriers for groups who are actually discriminated against.

😂