Tube accidents soar to record high of almost 5,000 a year

Pic:Figures show a sharp increase in accidents on the Tube
Staff reporter(wp/es):

The number of accidents involving passengers on the Tube has risen to a record high of almost 5,000 a year, the Standard reveals today.

It spiralled to 4,928 last year, an 11 per cent increase from 2015, amid fears that overcrowding and fewer staff at smaller stations are fuelling the rise.

There was a sharp increase in accidents at several busier stations, including Baker Street, Bank/Monument, Bond Street, Westminster, Southwark and Tottenham Hale.

Small rises were recorded at dozens of other stations.

The figures for Zones 1-4 led to calls for Transport for London to ensure that the Tube is the “safest in the world”. 

As passenger numbers rise, its bosses are investing millions to improve capacity at key stations including Bank, Bond Street, Victoria and Tottenham Court Road.

There will be more frequent services on several lines to reduce crowding. An extra 325 station workers are being recruited this year after a staffing review that followed ticket office closures.

There were 4,517 accidents in 2014 and 4,439 in 2015, before the sudden increase of 489 last year to 4,928.

Tom Brake, Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for Carshalton  and Wallington, said: “London Underground must redouble their efforts to make the Tube the safest in the world.”

Richard Freeston-Clough, of London TravelWatch, said: “The figures would suggest that smaller stations with fewer staff around are recording more accidents because staffing is likely to have been reduced.

"Conversely, accidents at bigger stations like Bank/Monument and Baker Street are also increasing because the growth in usage is making them more crowded.”

He said the rise  in accidents highlighted the need for extra staffing and congestion relief.

“Customer fall in gap” accidents were slightly down last year but 62 out of the 282 were at one station, Baker Street.

The high number there has been blamed on the arrival of S-stock trains level with the platform, to aid wheelchair access. This widens the gap at stations with curved platforms.

Dr Karen McDonnell, occupational safety and health policy adviser for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, said TfL had a “duty of care” to passengers.

She added: “If a rise in incidents is taking place, then organisations must investigate the causes and do all they can to mitigate the risks.”

Steve Griffiths, the Tube’s chief operating officer, said safety was its “top priority”, with the number of injuries running at one in every four million trips.

“We continue to work hard to reduce this even further, with staff on hand to help customers,” he said.

“We have introduced flashing blue lights to draw attention to gaps between trains and platforms at key locations and we’re investing heavily in adjusting platform edges to narrow gaps.”

Office of Rail and Road statistics indicate that the Tube is the safest big railway in Europe, TfL said.

From this month, the frequency of Victoria line services has risen from 33 trains an hour at peak times to 36. From 2019, lines including the District, Circle, and Metropolitan will have more trains.

The amount of passengers using the Tube is rising, TfL said, up from 1.3 billion in 2014/15 to 1.35 billion in 2015/16.

The number of “fall in gap” cases was just over 280 last year, compared with 293 in 2015 and 269 in 2014.

Some key stations have seen falls in the number of overall accidents — also thought to include people slipping over and falling down stairs — such as Victoria, down from 126 in 2014 to 72 last year, and Oxford Circus, down from 133 to 118.

Manchester bombing appeals raise £2.3m for victims' families

Pic:Tributes left in central Manchester to the victims of Monday night’s bomb attack. 
Staff reporter(wp):

Fundraising pages set up for the families of those killed in the Manchester attack have raised more than £2.3m in an outpouring of compassion for victims, JustGiving has said.

More than 200 people have set up JustGiving pages for individual victims of the terrorist atrocity, which left 22 people dead and more than 60 injured.

Members of the public have also set up 185 pages to raise money for all the victims of the attack. JustGiving said all the money raised by individuals for specific victims was being held in quarantine while checks were carried out to ensure the fundraisers were legitimately raising money for families.

The money raised so far does not include a pledge of £1m from the city’s two football clubs.

A spokesman for JustGiving said in most cases where fundraising pages had been set up for individual victims, the company would work with Greater Manchesterpolice to try to pass the money straight to the families rather than to the fundraisers.

The money raised includes donations to an appeal set up by the Manchester Evening News and another by the British Red Cross. These have reached £1.3m and £808,000 respectively.

The pages set up by members of the public have raised more than £200,000.

JustGiving emailed fundraisers on Wednesday night to inform them that the money would be placed in quarantine while checks were carried out to verify that those behind the fundraising had connections with the families involved and were not involved in any fraudulent activity.

“We will start speaking to the individuals who have set up pages for specific victims about whether they have personal links with the families,” said a spokesman for JustGiving. “We are working with Greater Manchester police and we think in the vast majority of cases the page owner will say can you pass the money on.

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“None of this money will be released until we are satisfied and if someone refused to allow us to pass money on to the families ourselves then obviously that would raise concerns with us.

“In 99 out of 100 cases crowdfunding pages are set up by friends of the families, people with a connection to the family, but it is slightly different with the Manchester attack because there has been an outpouring of compassion from people who might not necessarily know the family involved.”

More than 30 concerns have been raised by members of the public about the legitimacy of JustGiving pages set up for victims’ families. The complaints are being investigated by members of JustGiving including fraud experts.

“It is a very complex thing from our side because it is very hard to make judgment on someone’s intentions which is why we have taken the preventative step of putting everything into quarantine while we establish the intentions of those behind the pages,” the spokesman said.

JustGiving charges commission fees of 2% and 5% to manage the pages. The company has made a donation of £50,000 to the British Red Cross appeal page.

Rail inquiry verdict on Gatwick passenger death

Staff reporter(wp):

Investigators say they have found no evidence to explain why a passenger put his head out of a train window, which led to his death when he was struck by a signal gantry.

Simon Brown was on a Gatwick airport to London Victoria train when the accident occurred near Balham, south London. The Gatwick Express train was travelling at about 61mph at the time of the incident on 7 August last year, the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) said.

A post-mortem report found no traces of drugs or alcohol, and evidence suggests Brown, 24, was not taking photographs, according to the report.

The window was in a door opposite a guard’s compartment and was not intended for passenger use, although it was accessible to anyone travelling on the train.

Investigators noted that a yellow sticker on the door warning people not to lean out of the window when the train was moving was in a “cluttered environment” among other information signs. “It is not possible to say whether the lack of conspicuity of the warning notice was a factor in the accident,” the RAIB said.

The distance between the section of the window where Brown’s head was positioned and the signal gantry, believed to have been installed in 1952, was found to be 26cm. Although the clearance complied with standards for existing structures, it was less than an industry-recommended minimum for new structures where there are trains with opening windows.

The report recommended that Network Rail, in collaboration with train operators, introduce a process for sharing data regarding clearances between structures and trains at window height so that operators can make “more informed decisions” about the management of risk associated with opening windows.

Brown was pronounced dead at the scene by ambulance staff. British Transportpolice treated the incident as non suspicious.

Brown was described by friends as a “lifelong railway fanatic”. Originally from East Grinstead, West Sussex, he had volunteered on the Bluebell Railway as a nine-year-old and had recently taken up a position as an engineering technician with Hitachi Rail Europe in Bristol.

The bombing in Manchester has brought national trauma. We must not lash out

Crime reporter(wp):

The Manchester bomber was not just trying to kill those at the pop concert, but he was also targeting you and me. He wanted to make us nervous about going to a shopping centre today or attending events such the FA Cup at Wembley this Saturday. His weapon of choice was the emotional responses that we carry within us and which he was trying to trigger.

Emotions such as horror: at the lives snuffed out, the injuries sustained, the families devastated. Or fear: that on another occasion it might be us who is involved and who is carried away in bodybags. Or anger: that a person could do such a thing and be “inspired” by a political or religious ideology.

There is also the resentment that the attack forces us to reassess daily acts that we have taken for granted up to now: is it safe to travel on buses? Might it be best not take the children to a funfair?

Worst of all is the sense of vengeance it evokes in us, wanting to lash out and hurt those whom we – however lacking in evidence – associate with the bomber; at the same time, we instinctively raise drawbridges and seek to isolate ourselves from groups other than “our own”.

What all these responses have in common is that they are negative reactions, and although totally understandable, they lessen us rather than enhance us. We are being offered sugar-coated poison and should refuse it.

What is needed is reassurance on two levels. First, the reassurance that our way of life will continue. More security checks may now be necessary, but concert halls will still function, public transport will still run. We want there to be a tomorrow and we want it to resemble today.

Second, the reassurance that our values are still intact. Society will still be based on law and justice. Cross-communal events and inter-faith dialogue will carry on, social and cultural events will still flourish. Doing what is noble, speaking the truth, loving our neighbours as ourselves – they will all remain.

With time and help, we can cope with personal shock and we can overcome individual trauma, but what we fear most is our social structures being derailed and losing everything that hundreds of years of gradual progress have achieved.

We know we are not alone: New York faced 9/11, Paris experienced Charlie Hebdo, and many others have suffered and survived. Amid the mayhem, there are beacons of light. As the prime minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenberg, said after the shooting of schoolchildren in 2011: “You will not destroy us. No one will stop Norway from being itself” and he vowed that the response would be “more democracy, more openness, more humanity”. It was echoed by the populace at large, which said: we shall not change our way of life, we shall recognise the disturbed man responsible for the killings as an exception and not let him alter the rule.

It could have been so different: looking instead for scapegoats, pointing fingers, turning inwards, blaming migrants or each other. It was a national example of staying calm, working together and believing in the common good.

It is also worth remembering that the forces of good are often underestimated. In the recent terrorist attack on Westminster Bridge, there was one terrorist, but thousands of people who rescued, comforted, gave medical care, and donated money in memory of the policeman who was killed, PC Keith Palmer.

The Manchester Arena will not be the last incident, and, sad to predict, more lives will be lost and more bereaved families will be created in other parts of the country. Individually, there will still be suffering, but, collectively, providing we can preserve our values and stop our emotions from diverting us, the attacks will be ineffective in their larger aim of altering who we are and how we behave.

Boys aged 14 killed man in London as taxi driver waited, court hears

Crime reporter(wp):

Two 14-year-old boys are among four people accused of killing a man in an “unprovoked” and “senseless” knife attack while they kept a taxi driver waiting to take them home, a court has heard.

The defendants took a minicab from Hendon to Harrow, north-west London, then asked the driver to wait for them as they murdered Hussein Ahmed, 19, and attacked two 17-year-olds, the court was told.

After seven or eight minutes, it is alleged, they returned to the cab and said: “Drive, boss.”

Ahmed was stabbed once in the back in a street close to South Harrow tube station on 18 November last year. He died a few days later in hospital after his family gave permission for his life support machine to be turned off.

A boy was stabbed in the arm and stomach, while another narrowly avoided injury when an attacker slashed the sleeve of his jacket.

The two 14-year-olds and a 16-year-old, who was 15 at the time of the attack, are on trial at the Old Bailey.

They deny murder, wounding with intent, attempted wounding with intent and conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm. They cannot be named for legal reasons.

A fourth alleged attacker aged 16 fled the country and is wanted by police, the court heard.

Anthony Orchard QC, prosecuting, told jurors: “Sadly, this case is about the death of another young man who lost his life to a senseless stabbing which took place on a street in London.

“On Friday 18 November last year, shortly after 5pm, Hussein Ahmed was stabbed once in the back. The attack was unprovoked.

“Ahmed was treated close to the scene of the stabbing. Passersby, police and paramedics tried to stem the blood loss. Sadly, he died three days later.” 

The case continues.

Roger Moore – Saint, Persuader and the suavest James Bond – dies aged 89

Pic:Roger Moore
Entertainment reporter(wp):
He was the epitome of the suave English gent, quipping sweatlessly in a bespoke three-piece suit, who enjoyed an acting career spanning eight decades. On Tuesday, Roger Moore’s children announced his death at the age of 89 in Switzerland, saying: “he passed away today ... after a short but brave battle with cancer”.

Moore was best known for playing the third incarnation of James Bond as well as his roles in hit shows The Saint and The Persuaders. He also devoted a lot of his time to humanitarian work, becoming a Unicef goodwill ambassador in 1991.

The actor was born in London in 1927 and, after working as a model in the early 50s, he signed a seven-year contract with MGM. His early movies weren’t particularly memorable, from Interrupted Melody to The King’s Thief, and it was a move to the small screen that brought Moore his first taste of success.

“During my early acting years I was told that to succeed you needed personality, talent and luck in equal measure,” Moore said to WT in 2014. “I contest that. For me it’s been 99% luck. It’s no good being talented and not being in the right place at the right time.”

His first break in TV came in romantic adventure Ivanhoe which was the start of a set of hit shows for Moore, including western Maverick and crime shows The Saint and The Persuaders. The success of The Saint gave Moore an opening in Hollywood yet the resulting spy movies failed to ignite the box office.

Moore had been approached to play the character of James Bond but scheduling conflicts with his television roles meant that he was never available. When Connery had stepped down from the role for good, Moore was asked again and made his first Bond film in 1973, the well-received Live and Let Die. He went onto star in another six films as 007 over a period of 12 years, making him the longest running actor in the role. When he finally retired from the role in 1985, he was 58.

“Being eternally known as Bond has no downside,” Moore told WT. “People often call me ‘Mr Bond’ when we’re out and I don’t mind a bit. Why would I?”

After handing over the reins to Timothy Dalton, Moore took a break from the spotlight and didn’t make another film until 1990. From then on, his acting work became sparse, including small roles in Spice World and Boat Trip.

In 1999, Moore was awarded a CBE which then became a knighthood in 2003, given to him for his charity work. Moore’s decision to become a Unicef goodwill ambassador was actually based on his friendship with Audrey Hepburn, who had also worked with the same charity.

“The knighthood for my humanitarian work meant more than if it had been for my acting,” Moore said to the WT. “I’m sure some people would say, “What does an actor know about world issues?” But [working for Unicef] I’ve become an expert on things from the causes of dwarfism to the benefits of breastfeeding. I feel very privileged.”

Moore also wrote two books about his time as Bond as well as two autobiographies, the most recent of which was 2014’s Last Man Standing. When asked by Time in 2012 who his favourite Bond was, he changed his mind from Sean Connery to Daniel Craig.

“You can either grow old gracefully or begrudgingly,” he said to GQ in 2008. “I chose both.”

Moore is survived by his wife, Kristina Tholstrup, and three children.

Bombing Suspect named as Salman Abedi, US officials say

Crime reporter(wp/es):

The suspect behind the Manchester bomb attack has been identified by British authorities, US officials say.

The alleged bomber has been named as Salman Abedi in the United States, the Press Association have reported.

A blast just after 10.30pm on Monday shook the Manchester Arena as music fans, many of whom were young children, left an Ariana Grande concert at the 21,000 capacity venue.

Armed officers raided suspected bomber’s address in the city where the attack took place ordering residents indoors as they carried out a controlled explosion.

The Fallowfield property, where Abedi was registered as living, became the centre of the investigation into the atrocity outrage as detectives hunted those thought to be behind the blast.

Greater Manchester Police said a controlled explosion was carried out in Elsmore Road at around lunchtime on Tuesday.

It came as a 23-year-old man was also arrested by plain clothes police officers in south Manchester over the deadly bombing . 

As armed officers carried out the swoop, equipped with guns and body armour, those who live there described the "sizeable bang" they heard.

Some 22 people were killed and at least 59 injured as the explosion rocked the arena.

Among the dead are eight-year-old Saffie Rose Roussos, 18-year-old Georgina Calder and 26-year-old John Atkinson.

Families continued to search frantically for those still missing on Tuesday, many of whom were teenagers.

Chris Upton, headteacher at Tarleton Community Primary School, where the youngest victim was a pupil, said in a statement: “Saffie was simply a beautiful little girl in every aspect of the word. 

“She was loved by everyone and her warmth and kindness will be remembered fondly. 

“Saffie was quiet and unassuming with a creative flair.”

Georgina was described by friends as “kind and loving”.

Her friend Shelby Wharton, 17, told the Standard: “We were all praying for her to be found safely. Then we were told she had passed away.

“She was always very open, would talk to everyone. She was so nice. It does not feel real. I just pray for her family.”

Theresa May has said earlier on Tuesday that police knew the identity of the suicide bomber who deliberately chose a place where he could cause “maximum carnage” when he detonated a bomb at a pop concert in Manchester.

The Prime Minister said that police and security services were working to establish whether he was acting alone or as part of a group. 

Mrs May was speaking outside Downing Street after chairing an emergency Cobra meeting in the wake of the attack.

She said it was “beyond doubt” that the people of Manchester and the UK had fallen victim to a “callous terrorist attack”.

But she added that the "cowardice of the attacker was met by the bravery of the emergency services and the people of Manchester".