THING OF THE WEEK
FERRYING PHONES… The trains in this country take a lot of flak. And often they are dreadful. There are few worse feelings than running to the station to catch your train, slipping on board as the doors slide shut, only for a disembodied voice to come on the PA system and tell you that the train you are physically on has been cancelled.
However, amid our disillusionment with all things rail, we must not forget that, within a flawed system, there are heroes to be found.
Dave Ferry, chief sales officer at digital infrastructure provider ITS all all-round good guy, experienced this on Thursday when his colleague left his phone at Stockport station before boarding the 07:44 to London Euston. Ferry called his workmate’s phone and it was answered by a member of station staff who informed him that it would contravene policy to put the phone on the next service bound for the capital.
Avanti West Coast to the rescue – a sentence that may never have been said before – as Rachel, the train manager, made a few calls and arranged for the phone to be put on the next train, where it was collected by its grateful owner.
“Sometimes, regardless of the policy, we have to empower people to just do the right thing for the customer,” Ferry said.
The Glegg Arms has been saved…for now. Credit: Google Earth
CAMPAIGN… A local campaign group has prevailed over Premier Inn owner Whitbread PLC in true underdog style. To date, there had not been much dissent to Whitbread’s plans to knock down a slew of soulless pubs adjoining its Premier Inn hotels across the country but that was not the case in Heswall, where a campaign to save Glegg Arms carried enough weight to convince Wirral Council’s planning committee to reject the proposal.
Under Whitbread’s vision for the site, the pub, which dates back to the 1800s, would have been pulled down and its facade recreated as part of an extension to the hotel next door. The building is not listed and the decision to reject it was made against the advice of officers. Can anyone else smell an appeal coming?
DRONING… You know when people say AI and robots are coming for our jobs and you’re just like “lol” and try to forget about the impending collapse of civilisation as we know it? Well, this week workers nipping out for lunch in the Bridge Street/Spinningfields area of Manchester were treated to irrefutable proof of our impending obsolescence in the form of a drone window cleaner.
When I were a lad, my parents’ windows were cleaned by a man with a leathery face called Kevin who was never seen without his ladder or T-bar. He would come round every other week to clean our windows and then knock on to pick up his money. We paid him in COINS. Remember them? Times they are a-changing.
