ABB125
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There's a very high level of mask wearing on my LNER train today
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27th January - Plan B easing - observations and usage
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I am sure that LNER have convinced some passengers that masks are still mandatory.
ABB125
Established Member
Probably. It'll be interesting to see what announcements there are to that effect
Well that was quick! Already a manual announcement about wearing masks, seconds after departure.
In addition, LNER's WiFi login page has incorrect information:
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Class 33
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I can't believe how gullible some people are to to fall for LNER's ridiculous PA announcements and signage that face masks are still mandatory!! It should be very common knowledge by now that face masks have been no longer mandatory since 28th January!
LNER(along with other train operators such as GWR) really need to drop their messaging about face masks and move on.
To/from Scotland is understandable, otherwise it would be pretty depressing.
In England yes, the trouble is that LNER have Scotland (and Wales for GWR) to contend with. It would be nice to have other cross-border Train Companies, particularly XC (as they serve both Wales and/or Scotland), as a comparison.
My own view is that if I am travelling between two stations in England on a service to/from Wales and/or Scotland, the announcements are intended for other passengers whose circumstances are different to mine and therefore do not apply to anyone (or anyone else for that matter) in my circumstances.
Wilts Wanderer
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Just out of curiosity, how are you judging between people who are choosing to wear a mask and those who are ‘gullible’ and don’t realise they don’t have to wear one?
To add, I made a series of very long distance journeys on multiple operators a couple of weeks ago, including both LNER and Lumo, and proportion of passengers mask wearing seemed to be fairly uniform across all different parts of my journey, regardless of what announcements were made.
urpert
Member
0% on this Southern 377. It is Saturday night though…
bramling
Veteran Member
Tesco Extra this evening. A surprisingly high estimated 50% mask use, plus the “Let’s be on the safe side” PA announcement playing every couple of minutes.
Are we ever going to properly move on from all this?
Are we ever going to properly move on from all this?
kingston_toon
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One of the last handful of northbound Northern line High Barnet branch services last night (Friday) - full and many standing, very reminiscent of pre-Covid! Mask wearing around 25% in our carriage.
I think the answer to that lies Individually. I have no doubt that some people will take a long time before they stop wearing face coverings etc., because that’s how they feel about it, even if most people don’t.
No mention of masks on any trains since 27 January - and that's a lot of trains in that time - except from LNER
LNER are very maskivist and the announcements and signage is deeply inappropriate and I find it offensive to suggest we are not being considerate; on the contrary, it is LNER who are not being considerate.
LNER are very maskivist and the announcements and signage is deeply inappropriate and I find it offensive to suggest we are not being considerate; on the contrary, it is LNER who are not being considerate.
bramling
Veteran Member
GTR, as far as I can tell removed their automated announcements pretty promptly. I don’t think the on-train posters ever reappeared in December, though there’s still the odd one that’s been there since last summer.
Someone I know mentioned they’d had passive-aggressive driver announcements on LU this week, including “please wear your mask and set an example to others”. I did suggest making a complaint, but he didn’t have precise enough timings to make it worthwhile.
I cannot see what difference that would make?
The train is not going to be boarded by police checking to see if anyone is unmasked.
Rather similar to the "We're almost there" announcements in Sainsburys. Funnily enough we were "almost there" last summer. The PA stopped for a while but came back recently.
C2C still has quite a loud message about them which goes off after every stop.
I have actually been on an LNER service where this did happen. Wasn’t very recent, but they clearly do do this.
And people just need the courage to say "I am exempt" or simply wear a sunflower lanyard and nothing needs to be said; anyone can self-exempt themselves for a huge range of reasons.
Case rates are lower in England, where masks are not mandatory, and have reduced since the mandate was lifted, so it is absolutely clear that the SNP are in cloud cuckoo land.
Case rates are lower in England, where masks are not mandatory, and have reduced since the mandate was lifted, so it is absolutely clear that the SNP are in cloud cuckoo land.
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Class 33
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Thing is we shouldn't really have to say "I'm exempt" or wear a lanyard anymore to train crew, shop staff, etc since the lifting of mandatory face mask laws on 28th January. The likes of LNER are saying "Wear a face covering, unless exempt". They're wrong as we don't need to be exempt to not wear a face covering anymore. If I was onboard one of their services and a member of train crew asked me why I'm not wearing a face covering, I shall say we don't have to anymore since 28th January. Even if I happened to be the only person in the train carriage not wearing a face covering and being the odd one out, I would still refuse to wear one(I don't have one anymore now anyway!). As it stands though, until LNER move on from this and drop their appalling PA messaging about face coverings, I will not bother using their services to travel. The same goes with GWR now since they introduced the "Thank you for wearing a face covering. Out of respect to others." PA messages they now have going off after departing every station! I can't be doing with travelling on these train services and hearing those annoying discriminating PA messages keep going off frequently. When are these companies going to move on from this nonsense??
I'm also avoiding any stores with PA announcements mentioning such words as "face coverings"/"face masks", "socially distance", "keep your distance", "Let's be on the safe side", "Like you, we know it's not over yet", "We're still all in this together". I'm looking at you Sainsbury's, Poundland, Tesco, Co-op! I can't be doing with shopping in these stores and still hearing that nonsense. Does my mental health no good. I now use alternative stores such as Asda, Aldi, Lidl, Home Bargains, B & M where thankfully they no longer have any PA announcemements mentioning those dreaded words!
I'm also avoiding any stores with PA announcements mentioning such words as "face coverings"/"face masks", "socially distance", "keep your distance", "Let's be on the safe side", "Like you, we know it's not over yet", "We're still all in this together". I'm looking at you Sainsbury's, Poundland, Tesco, Co-op! I can't be doing with shopping in these stores and still hearing that nonsense. Does my mental health no good. I now use alternative stores such as Asda, Aldi, Lidl, Home Bargains, B & M where thankfully they no longer have any PA announcemements mentioning those dreaded words!
bramling
Veteran Member
I'm starting to adopt the royal policy of "never complain / never explain" when it comes to Covid. We shouldn't now be needing to get into dialogue and discourse about these matters when going about daily life, and when we do so it potentially feeds it.
Enthusiast
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South Western Railway from Waterloo to Poole yesterday and return today. “Emergency” timetable meant a change at Bournemouth was necessary.
Down train to Bournemouth probably 25% to 30% full at most. Face coverings virtually non-existent throughout. One couple joined at Basingstoke fully masked and were “decloaked” within five minutes after looking around the carriage at everybody else. One or two passengers donned masks when they got up to use the facilities. Onward journey to Poole slightly busier – perhaps 50% full (though only 5 carriages compared to ten on the London service). Same level of mask wearing, virtually nil.
Return journeys were slightly busier but with the same level of mask wearing. Until Southampton Central, that was. There, dozens of what appeared to be students boarded the train filling my carriage to perhaps 60% - 70%. Probably 90% of these new arrivals were masked and most of them that I could observe travelled in that fashion all the way to London. (As an aside, I couldn’t fathom what a trainload of students were doing travelling from Southampton to London at 1pm on a Tuesday afternoon in February– but that’s another tale!
).
There were no face covering announcements on board on any of the four trains I used (but plenty of “See it, Say it, Sorted”
) and no posters that I noticed. But disappointingly, as we were waiting for our train at Poole (in the comfort of the station building as it was chucking it down) there was a manual announcement from someone sounding like the woman in the ticket office: “South Western trains would like to remind its customers they should continue to wear a face covering when using our trains or on our stations as a duty [yes, a duty - I had to check with Mrs Enthusiast to confirm what I'd heard] to other passengers.” I didn’t have time to question where this “duty” originated from as the train was pulling in. Their website (updated 27th January) says “Travel with confidence. Thank you for wearing a face covering if you can, as a courtesy to others.”
On a wider note trains from Kent to London seem to have increased passenger levels over the last couple of weeks. The train I used to get home from Waterloo East today was extremely busy (plenty standing in my carriage) but I believe there had been a couple of cancellations. Mask wearing seems to vary, sometimes up to 80% “compliance” or thereabouts but often far lower.
Continuing to be disheartening, though, is the level of masking up on my local TfL buses on the London/Kent border. Very often it is almost 100%, with me being the only rebel. However, the drivers seem far less eager to press the button that sounds their automated announcement now. Whether they are under less strict instruction or they’re simply fed up with it all is anybody’s guess. My belief is that the tone of the concluding sentence of that announcement (“It’s there [unnecessarily long pause] to protect us all”) reminds them too much of “Listen With Mother.”
Down train to Bournemouth probably 25% to 30% full at most. Face coverings virtually non-existent throughout. One couple joined at Basingstoke fully masked and were “decloaked” within five minutes after looking around the carriage at everybody else. One or two passengers donned masks when they got up to use the facilities. Onward journey to Poole slightly busier – perhaps 50% full (though only 5 carriages compared to ten on the London service). Same level of mask wearing, virtually nil.
Return journeys were slightly busier but with the same level of mask wearing. Until Southampton Central, that was. There, dozens of what appeared to be students boarded the train filling my carriage to perhaps 60% - 70%. Probably 90% of these new arrivals were masked and most of them that I could observe travelled in that fashion all the way to London. (As an aside, I couldn’t fathom what a trainload of students were doing travelling from Southampton to London at 1pm on a Tuesday afternoon in February– but that’s another tale!
).There were no face covering announcements on board on any of the four trains I used (but plenty of “See it, Say it, Sorted”
) and no posters that I noticed. But disappointingly, as we were waiting for our train at Poole (in the comfort of the station building as it was chucking it down) there was a manual announcement from someone sounding like the woman in the ticket office: “South Western trains would like to remind its customers they should continue to wear a face covering when using our trains or on our stations as a duty [yes, a duty - I had to check with Mrs Enthusiast to confirm what I'd heard] to other passengers.” I didn’t have time to question where this “duty” originated from as the train was pulling in. Their website (updated 27th January) says “Travel with confidence. Thank you for wearing a face covering if you can, as a courtesy to others.”On a wider note trains from Kent to London seem to have increased passenger levels over the last couple of weeks. The train I used to get home from Waterloo East today was extremely busy (plenty standing in my carriage) but I believe there had been a couple of cancellations. Mask wearing seems to vary, sometimes up to 80% “compliance” or thereabouts but often far lower.
Continuing to be disheartening, though, is the level of masking up on my local TfL buses on the London/Kent border. Very often it is almost 100%, with me being the only rebel. However, the drivers seem far less eager to press the button that sounds their automated announcement now. Whether they are under less strict instruction or they’re simply fed up with it all is anybody’s guess. My belief is that the tone of the concluding sentence of that announcement (“It’s there [unnecessarily long pause] to protect us all”) reminds them too much of “Listen With Mother.”
Absolutely disgraceful and discourteous by that SWR staff member; this hardly instils "confidence".
Sadly some rail staff don't know the meaning of the word courteous and seem to act in a manner that is anything but; fortunately it's a minority but they are very much out there and very little seems to be done to combat it.
bramling
Veteran Member
I heard an automated PA, in the female version of the pair of excruciating voices which have been regularly used at NR stations for Covid PAs, at Euston mainline today which was along the lines of "please wear a face covering out of courtesy to others".
Some variable mask observations today. I went a couple of stops on a quite busy (virtually all seats taken and some standing) Met Line train where the mask use was quite low (estimated 10-20%), but then a Bakerloo Line train with about 8 in the carriage where I was the only one unmasked.
I'll never not wear a mask on the tube now, long after it stops being a requirement of carriage. The filthy air is the main reason, viruses not so fussed about.
davetheguard
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That's fine; that's your choice. But others want to be able to make a choice too, without being threatened or being told they're not being "courteous".
102 fan
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Did you use the tube prior to the Covid outbreak?
I wasn't that regular a user, but yes, and I did on other metro systems too. About 15 years ago I was on the tube with a friend who was from London, she used to hold a napkin to her noise and month when on the deep tube lines. I asked her why, one day she said blow your nose after being on it and you'll see why. I did so, and black filthy was present on the tissue. Ever since then I have used some kind of mouth covering while on it. I am not a regular user by any means, but when I am in London I will wear a mask on it.
43096
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That is my issue with the messaging. It’s utterly appalling to tell your customers they are not courteous because they don’t wear a mask. Maybe it’s time to start making complaints to TOCs for that messaging?
Class 33
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I for one will be making a complaint to GWR because of their irritating and discriminating "Thank you for wearing a face covering, if you can. As a courtesy to others." pre-recorded PA announcement they've introduced since the scrapping of mandatory face mask laws on 28th January! This message is basically saying to those people not wearing a face mask, you're getting no thanks, and you're also not being courteous to other passengers and train crew! This sort of one-sided messaging in favour of the face mask wearers really needs to stop. And with the scrapping of all remaining Covid restrictions on 24th February, any remaining signage and PA announcements on trains, train stations, supermarkets, shops, etc really needs to be completely removed altogether. Time to get back to complete normality now! We don't need to hear and see words such as "face coverings", "face masks", "social distancing", "keep your distance" EVER again!
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