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Here’s a video made by documentary film maker Yannis Mendez – who was following and filming Jeremy Corbyn on the infamous ‘traingate‘ Virgin Train – clearly showing there were no free seats available:
A closer study of the CCTV footage released by Virgin itself – which supposedly shows Corbyn walking by ’empty’ seats – actually confirms the Corbyn team’s claims that they were occupied by children or reserved with luggage:
Virgin Trains and Richard Branson also claimed that there were unreserved seats available in coach H on the train Jeremy Corbyn said was “ram packed”:
But coach H is not just a passenger coach. Here’s a tweet from Virgin Trains confirming coach H is the food coach:
And further study of the video Virgin itself released clearly shows the coach was indeed the food bar and therefore had few seats available for passengers:
Other passengers on the train at the time also confirm Corbyn was offered seats by Virgin staff only after he had had to sit on the floor for some time, and that the train was indeed ram packed:
https://twitter.com/CharlesBAnthony/status/768089699214848004
So. Either Virgin Trains and Richard Branson got a bit mixed up with their times and ‘forgot’ where their own food coach is.
Or Richard Branson is – oh what’s that technical word for this kind of thing?
Oh yes, that’s right.
Lying.
.
PS. Can’t for the life of me think why Branson would want to lie about a Labour leader pledged to bring UK railways back into public ownership:
PPS. Also looks like Virgin and Branson may have broken the law. More info here.
PPSPPS.
Pride's Purge 
Reblogged this on disabledsingleparent.
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Tweeted @melissacade68
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Spot on this just shows what the establishment wil do to keep the status quo.
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Thank you for printing truth its just awful the way lies upon lies get put out there
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Nice one, Tom, I suspected as much!
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Reblogged this on sdbast.
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God, what possible reason could there be for a rail franchise owner to make up shit like this against Jeremy Corbyn..?
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To be fair, the food bar sign was not on the compartment with the empty seats. That is clearly a seating compartment, a food bar has a bar and food for sale in it.
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I’m struggling to see how this ‘proves’ anything, other than there was a sign there saying ‘Food Bar’, which clearly doesn’t refer to these seats.
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Coach H on those services is both the food coach *and* a passenger coach. The food bar (food service and small preparation area) is at one end of the carriage, the other half of the carriage is unreserved seating as shown in the photo (available to all passengers, not just those making purchases – the days of the restaurant car are long gone…).
Indeed, when asked, train and station staff will inform customers without reservations that unreserved seating is available in coach H. Obviously it tends to fill up eventually, but it looks pretty empty in that photo…
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He has entered a carriage clearly marked “food bar” the carriage has seats ergo the seats belong to the “food bar” the significance of which is there are no sockets in these cars to plug equipment into for use or recharging. That’s a food bar or is it your suggestion that there is some kind of secret dimension between him and the “food bar” sign behind him festooned on the glass?
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The seats do not “belong” to the food bar in any meaningful sense of the word.
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People were pouring scorn on the fact that people had reserved seats with bags. But if they were queueing for food then they would.
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There’s a lot of complexities to this that the Corbyn bashers seem to be missing, but this post is sadly uninformed. Half of Coach H is where the food is sold and the other half is standard seating – you don’t have to be eating to use it.
I suspect Corbyn, travelling with a large entourage, passed through Coach H in the (rather naive) hope that there might be more seats available further on. Having walked down half the train to the front – really quite a long way – and not much feeling like going all the way back they then said “sod it” and sat down where they were. Other passengers sitting on the floor presumably got on closer to the front and didn’t realise there were free seats in the middle, or were travelling in groups and would rather be together and on the floor than apart and on seats.
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Coach H may or may not be the food bar. But those seats are still clearly visible in that picture, they’re still empty and Corbyn is still wandering his way right through them.
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And its still remarkably incompetent (and expensive0 not to have advance tickets and reservations.
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being offered a seat would never happen by a member of staff unless in an emergency
this was not an emergency and thus corbyn is correct in not accepting any so called upgrade when no other passenger would be given an upgrade
branson was wrong as he is retired from virgin trains in intervening as he wouldn’t have a clue on rail staff procedure
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People saying he couldn’t sit in the seats adjoining the food bar, or that a whole carriage was full of seats reserved by bags and/or unaccompanied children: when were you last on a train? People who EVER use trains know that is as obviously nonsense as the idea there are often no seats is obviously true.
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Pingback: Did Corbyn stage traingate? Clearly not. Did Virgin/BBC break law? Probably. | The SKWAWKBOX Blog
Well we all know Bransom and Virgin were lying
The seats had either been reseved, had luggage on them or children sitting there Check THIS for Tral news
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Hang on – those ’empty’ seats in the food bar are clearly anything but – if you look carefully, especially on the right hand side of the stills, you can clearly see people’s heads there – they may look empty from that angle but they’re certainly not.
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BRANSON LIARS
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I have also witnessed the experience when passengers were required to stand or sit on the floor on a Virgin train and where those of us with a mobility difficulty were prevented from getting to the mobility toilet because of the crush caused by problems on the line and decisions taken to double up on trains, My Member of Parliament wrote to Virgin about the problem and did not get a reply I now travel First class .The interesting aspect is the rush to judgement and comment by Harriet Harman showing the desperation of some of the conspirators of the Parliamentary Party Colin Smart
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The food bar is not the restaurant. The seats are regular passenger seats. They just happen to be next to the buffet so there are less of them. Anyone can sit in them.
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Sounds likes typical Labour trick of redefining the facts when they don’t suit their argument to me.
See http://dioclese.WordPress.com
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You don’t travel on trains much, do you Tom Pride? Those are normal seats in half of the food coach. They are clearly mostly empty. People often leave bags on seats next to them in the hope of getting extra space, and if you want the seat you just ask them to move the bag. If you want a seat next to your wife you address the carriage and ask if anyone would mind moving so that you can sit together. (people leap to be helpful if you do this politely). Seats with reservation stubs on them are routinely empty for the entire journey (for a variety of reasons) and once the train is in motion no-one complains if you just sit on them. And the prospective national leader, one would think, would be together enough to book online the day before, thereby securing reserved seats anyway just like almost everyone else travelling on the train. Commuter trains are another matter (their “rammedness” is a matter of planning policy not really under the control of train operators and it is hard to see how making prices cheaper or nationalisation would make commuter trains less crammed). Off-peak long distance trains are rarely full outside holiday getaway days. I speak from experience, being a frequent East and West Coast train traveller.
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They didn’t release it for entertainment so no it’s not breaking the law. And bags on seats are not reservations. This really is pathetic.
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A few more points… The “video proof” of no seats available that you refer to only shows one carriage, so it isn’t proof of anything except that one carriage being full, a common occurrence because rearmost carriages fill up first at termini. One child visible in a seat doesn’t prove that the rest of the seats also have unsupervised small children in them, which seems rather unlikely. The rearmost carriages of trains leaving London termini usually fill up quickly and have passengers standing between the seats and in the vestibules as the train pulls away, yet carriages further forward can still be nearly empty. When checking tickets the guard will point out to standing or floor-sitting passengers that there are numerous empty seats further up the train.
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Reblogged this on The Greater Fool.
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Is this a joke? We know he walked through an empty carriage, then walked through a reserved carriage, then sat down. You’ve shown a video of the reserved carriage after people have taken their seats. The CCTV shows the unreserved carriage was empty at 11.10am when he walked through it and empty at 11.46am when he took his seat after the propaganda piece.
The fact that JC can’t find a full train shows incompetency on his part.
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Oh good god. This is a tour de force in factual inaccuracy and delusion. Those seats are for anyone and they were unreserved. End of.
We get his point, but it was misjudged to make it here and in these circumstances.
And whether you think Virgin are capitalist demons or otherwise if I made false claims against a company you ran wouldn’t you at least have the rights to defend it?!
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Half of coach H is seating!
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rburnsuk said it was incompetent not to book seats, but on some trains you can’t! My daughter and grand-daughter went to Paddington on Monday on a midday train and was told when she booked the tickets (a while ago) that it wasn’t possible to book seats. Therefore they sat on the floor all the way (from Devon).
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He walk through the train looking for 2 seats together, there were non. Got to the end train now ‘ram packed’ after more people got on. Made point about overcrowded trains to video and sat in corridor. 42 mins later seats became available, sat on seat for rest of journey. Virgin try to discredit him media storm ensues, meanwhile an attack on our basic human rights is completely ignored and people wonder why some of us think the whole rotten system is terminally sick
.
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Off peak time train London to Manchester 3pm and the next one is 7pm. I counted 11 trains to Manchester inbetween! They really are not giving a Customer Service. People were sat on the floor and no room for bagage or prams on the train going to London a couple of weeks ago. I wrote to them and my questions were not answered regarding peak time trains of 11 so I will write again to address this.
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Here’s the reality instead of the social media and blogger hysteria:
1) If Corbyn wants re-nationalisation of the railways then he needs to grow up and present a comprehensive case, not just an anecdote about one train which was filled almost to capacity.
2) Virgin will remprimand some junior person and say sorry to the ICO for releasing the CCTV video. No more will be said.
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Pingback: Video proof that Virgin and Branson are lying about Jeremy Corbyn and #traingate | wgrovedotnet
Reblogged this on Worldtruth.
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Excellent reporting – thanks. I have seen a pic that has gone viral, of JC and a woman both sitting on the floor. The lady has it on her Twitter a/c. @KerenOrient. She’s added on to the pic, that it was around 45 mins before JC (and his wife – we now know they were both without seats & his team) was able to take a seat. After a family got off.
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Jeremy Corbyn has just demonstrated he cannot organise a story about a train journey without contradicting himself and appearing to olie. And then gets upset when journalists want to talk about it.
And some posters want to elect hiom a Leader of teh Labour Party … and PM eventually.
Could not organise a story about trains….
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Coach H is indeed the food bar but it also had around 30 seats, you can clearly see there are seat available in coach H. The video footage shows him walking through 1 coach, there are 5 full coaches in standard class plus the extra seats in the food bar coach, the prove anything then the footage would have to show him walking through all standard class coaches but it does not. Also in another article a passenger is quoted as saying he was found a seat by staff after around 45 mins, people are trying to say that it’s because passengers had gotten off by then, this is also a lie as the the first stop on the 1100 from London is York which is around 1hr 50 mins, so that shows that seat were indeed available. Dodgy self serving PR stunt me thinks.
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Mind you the truly truly frightening thing is that neither Jeremy nor any member of his team had the intelligence to reserve seats!! At least he and his wife could then have been together. If he and his team are so incapable and lacking in planning then how do you seriously think he would run a country! Shame on so many Labour MP’s for not having the guts to challenge him in origianlly. Desperate state of affairs for our nation to be without an effective opposition.
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Coach H is the foodbar – but it does have around 30 seats. You cannot reserve a seat on this coach but it is naturally the first to fill up.
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In response to this:
“And its still remarkably incompetent (and expensive0 not to have advance tickets and reservations.”
Given that he was traveling as part of the leadership hustings, I’m not sure whether it would have been possible to book.
Your grumble, of course, focuses solely on Corbyn, and not on any of the other passengers. Are you unclear that the point here is that passengers routinely cannot find seats – rather than just on this specific train journey?
Because if you are aware of that, then surely it is obvious that not everyone – in fact very few people – plan their train journeys far enough in advance to be assured of a seat if they try to make a reservation.
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The only thing this shows is you are a moron who has an agenda and can’t see anything that disagrees with that. Yes, you have circled either an arm or a bag. But that is no the only seat that appears empty! Who is on the other? I have never heard anything so stupid as reserving with baggage. If you think you can reserve a seat between stations by putting your bag on it then you are a rude individual who needs to learn how to behave. I have also never seen any denial from Virgin that states coach H is the food bar. If you had ever been on a virgin train you would have noted it is both the food car AND unreserved seating.
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Your rebuttal is based on a tweet over 2.5 years old. Of course nothing at all has changed in that time!!
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Oh and isn’t the timing a little too convenient. A day before the announcement of Virgin NHS hospital privatisation, and oh how obedient the hackery of the MSM were, focusing on this cod-.’scandal’ and skuppering Corbyn’s NHS anti-privatisation announcement.
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Give it up. JC has admitted himself that there were seats available on the train so a videos of one carriage “proving” that the entire train was full cuts no ice. Incompetence (a): they knew they were going. If they’d purchased tickets the day before on thetrainline.com the tickets would automatically have come with reserved seats at no extra charge. Incompetence (b): If the purpose of the exercise was to condemn ram-packed trains there are plenty to be found without JC lying about a train that isn’t actually full.
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Reblogged this on Britain Isn't Eating.
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What on earth are you on about? How is this “proof”? It means there was a food bar. And next to it were some seats. Empty seats. Which JC chose not to use. And then he lied. More to the point is the fact that a man who wants to be PM didn’t think to book ahead when he was taking a train and a film crew, and his wife. This man wants to run the country – and you want to let him??
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“Pride” has no pride. He knows that it isn’t proof but doesn’t care. We can be pretty sure that Pride doesn’t think that a video showing a single full carriage is proof that the entire train was full. Everyone interested in this story has seen the CCTV pictures showing empty reserved and unreserved seats and Corbyn’s own confession that the train wasn’t full and that he wanted 2 seats next to each other.
It is enough that the faithful can see Pride’s “proof” headline, not bother to read the article or watch the video, and revel in the martyrdom of St Jeremy at the hands of the Wicked Tory Press. They can reblog it and cite it in the Guardian comments section. It no more matters that Pride’s headline is a lie than it mattered that Corbyn was lying because there is a greater truth to be served.
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The first stop of the 11:00 train to Newcastle is York at 12:50.
Corbyn sat down at 11:46.
Either the passengers that were filling the seat magically disappeared from the train, or the seat was always empty and his team not competent enough to find it.
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Why the hell would they have seats if you can’t sit in them?
Hint: You can sit in them.
Virgin replied that there were no power sockets in that carriage, they didn’t say “there are empty seats nobody is allowed to sit in”
Corbyn (who I like) has been caught out doing “typical politician stuff”, accept it, move on.
More pressing are the Human Rights Act, and Hunt still forcing through his “7 day NHS” idiocy.
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There’s much selfishness on trains and other transport with people trying to keep a free seat next to themselves with their Luggage, bags and/or jackets/coats on seats… even I, a lone individual without the support of an entourage, can ask for those things to be moved so I can sit down. Generally, if I make a planned journey I plan ahead, in that way, I get a seat and as a bonus, a fare discount.
If I don’t plan ahead,I take the risk of having to fit in where ever there is a space and pay a higher price for the journey. I might add this is not exclusive to the UK.
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Click to access vtec84-mallard-2015-dl1.pdf
Half the coach is a buffet, half is seating, quit with your pro corbyn lies!
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All these people on here saying you politely ask someone to move a bag that is keeping a seat for a friend who may be getting a cup of tea/sandwich must be living in another country. I got on a train a few weeks ago to find all the reserved tags on the seats removed and people ( all ages) sat in them, one of which was mine. I ‘politely’ pointed out l had a ticket for said seat and was greeted with a unanimous ” tough shit”. The train was packed, so much so that the ticket inspector never even got to the carriage! Eventually the train emptied and when the inspector finally arrived and l told him what had happened he gave me a shrug of his shoulders. This was Arrival Wales from Cardiff to Manchester.
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IDGAF if it’s the food bar, there are free seats there. You managed to prove that ONE was occupied by a child, well done.
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“Either the passengers that were filling the seat magically disappeared from the train, or the seat was always empty and his team not competent enough to find it.” — Mark, August 25, 2016 at 11:04 am
Or, as has been reported, some lucky gits were given a free upgrade to first class by a train manager who then offered Corbyn et al their seats. Hardly rocket science!
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Jeremy Corbyn is an enemy of Israel and he can sit in the dirt for all I care. UK politics have no room for politicians who won’t support Israel.
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Meanwhile the government of war mongers aided and abetted by new labour continue the miserable austerity treatment of the population and those overseas like Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Oman ……………………… many people here too busy scrutinising Corbyn’s every move rathjer than protesting this countries inequalities …. typical!
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JC said in his own press conference he couldn’t find two seats together for him and his wife – watch it. That’s different from their being no seats. But the videos doesn’t mention he got a seat after 45’mins. that’s over a hour before the first stop.
If a journalist did that they’d get the sack.
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Why do peopleplay int the hands of those who wish to control them?Just too dumb to see it I guess.Sigh.
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I suspect that JC is being hit by the corpocracy/establishment as he stands for the people and is suported by the people. By gad they cannot have that now can they.
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Interesting in the video how seats that appear empty at first are shown to be occupied as the camera moves forward!
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“Jeremy Corbyn is an enemy of Israel and he can sit in the dirt for all I care. UK politics have no room for politicians who won’t support Israel.”
Israel?….You mean that Nazi, Apartheid state based on theft from the Palestinian people and the slow genocide of the Palestinians. If JC does not support Israel that is more reason to support JC.
” UK politics have no room for politicians who won’t support Israel.”
About time it did then.
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The seats in that coach do ‘appear’ to be empty but if indeed there were bags reserving them whilst people queued for food you wouldn’t see them would you. I’ve no doubt it’s another smear but I still don’t think this man can get the floating voters to vote labour. Therefore, another 5 years of Tory power aaargh.
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“Yes, I did walk through the train. Yes I did look for two empty seats together so I could sit down with my wife to talk to her. That wasn’t possible.”
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