Great Western Coffee Shop

"How things change is governed by procedures not common sense"

That was quoted yesterday, and attributed to a very informed and respected campaigner indeed.   I have not given his name, because I may be slightly misquoting - it could be "is sometimes governed by" or "is often governed by" and I don't want to misquote Stephen Joseph.

But thinking about the quote - so often it does seem to be the way that common sense is put aside for "this is how we do it".   After all, no-one got fired for following procedure, and procedure helps justify the continued employment of those who are applying it.   Procedure minimised risk to the applicants of the procedure, even where the results are perverse!

No idea what this OP is really about, but I think there may be a guard with Merseyrail who'd take issue with the sentence I've quoted. Whilst he hasn't been fired, he is facing criminal prosecution, despite apparently following procedure. With his employer, according to the RMT, clearing him of any wrongdoing in their internal investigation.

A bit of a rant ... not about a GWR incident ... about travel planning where service changes are made without consideration of the travel requirements around them.    I don't want to be too specific because I'm hoping to get a little common sense into some procedure over the next few weeks.