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UK - Train firm apologise for "ladies and gentlemen" announcement

abaddon said:
I wonder how this whole notion that people have a "right to not be offended" ever arose?

Nobody has a "right not to be offended". I have met people who are "offended" by the simple fact that I am an atheist. Shall I suddenly join some priesthood and abandon my beliefs simply because they are offended? Make atheism illegal perhaps? It's absurd.

The chap on the train has the right to be whatever he likes and I would happily defend that right. What he doesn't have is some imaginary right to not be offended. That is the territory of religion.

Anyone old enough to remember when Python's Life of Brian came out there were so many "offended" people crawling out of the woodwork it was astonishing. But guess what, it turns out that they had no right to "not be offended" either. The Life of Brian would have been utterly banned if the pearl clutchers had their way and their imagined "offence" was given any heed. Guess what. That movie is still freely available.

Always look on the bright side of life.
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Making a request/complaint to a company about their actions is not exercising a right not to be offended it's exercising your right to express your view. It's also something that companies actively encourage.

Private companies have a right to do what they want if it's legal but they will lose customers if they don't take into account that their actions may be offending some of their customer base.

This is business 101. And it's why these hot takes about 'I'm offended by X but you don't see me complaining' are entirely wrong-headed. Nobody has made it illegal to say ladies and gentlemen, a train company has stopped doing it because they believe there is a better way to address their customers.

Companies also have to consider the merits of the complaints - if for example a passenger complained that the person next to them was reading the Quran and that offended their Christian sensibilities then it wouldn't be right for the train company to ban Muslims from the trains. In fact it would be illegal.
 
Checkmite said:
The customers complained, and the company decided that they will now no longer use a superfluous "ladies and gentlemen" greeting that will make them feel excluded or marginalized.
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Not even that, it seems. The policy not to say "ladies and gentlemen" was reportedly already in place. The conductor in this case went against company policy, a passenger complained, and the company responded by saying it would ensure the policy was followed in the future.

As noted upthread, the company in question is actually publicly-owned, which means government-run. The government has rules on inclusive language. For example, since 2007 it has been official policy to use gender neutral language in legal writing.

That a publicly-owned company in the public service sector would have an official policy about using inclusive language is not even vaguely surprising. Perhaps it's notable that none of the people in this thread who are getting their knickers in a twist over this appear to be British, and therefore may not understand as much about the British government as those of us who live here do.
 
Interesting that the person who complained about announcements on London North Eastern Railway works as a railway guard for South Western Railway. I wonder if that had anything to do with it?
 
Oh, and a casual note for the more fragile members of this thread - if the only way you can continue to make an argument is to repeatedly pretend not to understand something simple, then perhaps a more fruitful approach might be to actually examine whether your argument is as good as you think it is.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
Not even that, it seems. The policy not to say "ladies and gentlemen" was reportedly already in place. The conductor in this case went against company policy, a passenger complained, and the company responded by saying it would ensure the policy was followed in the future.
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The article says on this persons particular train tbf
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
I refer you back to post #226.
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Repeating the same sentence is a bit pointless.

Maybe it is just me being too thick to get what poat 226 actually is saying.

Let's look at it

Oh, and a casual note for the more fragile members of this thread - if the only way you can continue to make an argument is to repeatedly pretend not to understand something simple, then perhaps a more fruitful approach might be to actually examine whether your argument is as good as you think it is.
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Cool. Criticise people you don't agree with. Sorted first sentence. Pretend you alone understand something, check. Pretend others points are invalid without giving a reason.

Nope

Still have no idea how this changes the fact only the pirma donnas train gets a different announcement
 
cullennz said:
Still have no idea how this changes the fact only the pirma donnas train gets a different announcement
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It doesn't. Because it's not a fact. And you know it's not a fact. You're just pretending it is because it allows you to continue to argue in bad faith, as you have done throughout this thread.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
It doesn't. Because it's not a fact. And you know it's not a fact. You're just pretending it is because it allows you to continue to argue in bad faith, as you have done throughout this thread.
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I am only going by what we know.

What we know is the company said this

“Please could you let me know which service you are on and I will ensure they remain as inclusive as we strive to be at LNER.
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If you have some evidence it is a company wide change, I will of course go with that.

In the interim, at least the non binary person won't feel so deeply persecuted.

Unless they have to get a different train one day.

And assuming they identify as a person.
 
Think Stephen Fry puts this **** into context better than most

 
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cullennz said:
In both instances the passengers didn't have their genders mentioned.



But my wife wants her gender named as it affirms her real gender, not just some generic entity. Not doing this makes her cry..........Lot's.....It is unbelievable...You should see how much we spend on hankies and psychiatrists.
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Repeating the one similarity (someone complained) the two situations share over and over doesn't make those situations similar.

"My gender was not named in a statement that began by addressing genders" is a different complaint than "nobody was addressed by gender at all, but I insist that I should be."

One is a request for equal treatment, the other is a request for exclusive status.

"They are both requests" is a rather calculating oversimplification.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
Oh, and a casual note for the more fragile members of this thread - if the only way you can continue to make an argument is to repeatedly pretend not to understand something simple, then perhaps a more fruitful approach might be to actually examine whether your argument is as good as you think it is.
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It's the same thing essentially as taking the simple, completely polite and matter-of-fact single-sentence statements of complaint by two professional railroad workers and turning it into a "histrionic" "snit" by "snotty nosed teens". What's actually there can't really be complained about beyond "well I just don't like this at all", so you have to change it into something else that is more assailable.
 
Matthew Best said:
Interesting that the person who complained about announcements on London North Eastern Railway works as a railway guard for South Western Railway. I wonder if that had anything to do with it?
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Indeed. Now that I know this kind of lapse in standards happens on the East Coast Main Line I'm going to switch to travelling to Southampton instead of York.
I assume the destinations are identical .
 
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