While I agree this was pretty poor,
Only pretty poor? It's abysmal.
competency management is very high and taken very seriously on the railways. What safeguards are missing in respect of competency?
It's not my problem to propose solutions but if sufficient safeguards were in place, incidents such as this (and numerous others, notably on ticketing matters but that's not for this thread) would not be happening; I've experienced several poor interactions by XC staff over recent years.
As for consistency (or lack of), you get that in any industry that employs humans
Not on my experiences; plenty of other customer facing industries don't seem to have the sort of issues the rail industry has
and is next to impossible to have 100% 100% of the time.
Is anyone asking for 100 per cent perfection?
People often react differently when they have a camera shoved in their faces
What do you mean by shoving the camera in their faces? Are you making an allegation of wrongdoing? Also how do people react differently, and do these different reactions also apply to passengers being videoed by staff and what differences have you noticed?
, though I do agree it wasn't great customer service.
That's a huge understatement.
The underlying poor behaviour here is the government/TOC/whoever in not providing enough usable luggage space on these (especially, but pretty much every other) trains.
That's not
behaviour; the XC staff member is the only one who behaved badly.
He could have handled the issue completely differently and also easily avoided undermining and publicly criticising the Northern rail staff member, who did absolutely nothing wrong.
Wasn't the reserved spot on the other train, and they moved to an unreserved spot as there wasn't a first class host?
They were advised to move by an XC member of staff, who was likely a member of the crew who had taken the set to Leeds. The reason for suggesting the other set was indeed due to a lack of 1st class host in the set in which the customer was reserved.
I don't get it. He was talking to the guy with the ramp, and he was honest there was little space, and was better in the other train.
Some folk take grievance at the drop of the hat, and looking at a few of his other videos, it seems that that's a hobby.
Are you condoning the abysmal behaviour/attitude of the XC train manager?
The Northern "guy with the ramp" staff member had done nothing wrong, was even following advice from XC staff; whether or not the XC TM was talking in such a manner to the passenger directly or to a member of rail staff, neither of whom had done anything wrong, it was an appalling way to behave in a customer facing role in the presence of members of the public.
I’m aware that no consent is needed in a public place, provided such videoing isn’t able to be construed as harassment. But technically, aren’t railway stations and trains private property, thus changing the expectation of privacy that passengers (and even staff) might reasonably expect?
There is no expectation of privacy in a place open to the public; this has been covered in other threads.