Prosecution over a £1.90 ticket mix up is a ludicrous injustice created by jobsworth train conductor

A 22-year-old fell victim to an increasingly complicated and expensive ticket system. His fight is our fight

Picture his deranged wickedness. Sam Williamson, using the Northern train’s app, bought a ticket from the village of Broadbottom to Manchester Piccadilly. Using a railcard discount for passengers aged 16 to 25, he purchased an “anytime” ticket. But, on the train, a conductor told him, as he described on X/Twitter, that his ticket was “invalid due to railcard restrictions”. Williamson offered to pay for a new ticket (he had underpaid by £1.90) or even take a fixed penalty fare. But the conductor rejected both and said he was obliged to report the infraction and that Williamson should prepare for the possibility of prosecution.
A few days later and Northern let it be known that it did indeed take a dim view of this incident. It wrote to Williamson explaining its intent “to prosecute”. “I’m worried that an innocent mistake over an obscure and opaque rule will lead to a punishment of £100s and a criminal record,” the young man told his Twitter followers.
Northern, meanwhile, is keeping its cards close to its chest in the case of His Majesty’s Northern Train Rail Franchise vs Williamson. “Everyone has a duty to buy a valid ticket before they board the train and be able to present it to the conductor or revenue protection office,” said some dullard, rules-afflicted spod in response. So I call upon Britain’s subordinated, cash-rinsed commuters to rally to the cause of of “The Broadbottom One.”
This is, of course, a ludicrous own-goal for Northern. For, as we rail travellers know, conductors can and do offer discretion. They can spot a miscreant when they see one. And as Sam Williamson was young, honest, pliant and rap-taking, his error should have been ignored. Indeed, the conductor – sorry, the revenue protection officer – should have sympathised with the passenger – I mean, customer – and muttered something like “the ticket system can be confusing” and then lapped up the cheers of the appreciating carriage. 
Instead, they put on their finest traffic warden hat, admonished the poor boy and reported him to the train operator.
The train operators – be it government or privately-owned (or a bit of both) – have, over time, constructed the most complex system imaginable for ticketing. And, like the tax system, it’s got out of control. God help the poor alien, foreigner, youth or even you or I, who thinks that buying a ticket from, say, Paddington to Taunton might enable one to travel from Paddington to Taunton.  
Of course, it doesn’t. Your ticket is a single, or a return (which costs less than a single, obviously), or it’s an advance, or a peak or off-peak, or super-off-peak or a season, flexi-season, split-save or some other ticket malarky from hell. And God forbid you slightly misjudge that purchase, a la Williamson, and find yourself in a quagmire of technicality. While you thought you were buying a ticket to ride, it turns out you’re a revenue-plundering criminal.
And while we humans might think it takes two to tango, the train operators prove it’s a very one-sided dance. We plunder our finances to purchase tickets while they operate trains with, for example, no cafes (in the case of GWR), leaving us at the mercy of a miserable, card-only offer of foul, ultra-processed snacks and very often no hot drinks. As I write this, on a train, my hands are sticky because I, for once, foolishly didn’t check to see if water was running in the loos before squirting on the soap. We suffer constant delays and a delay-repay system as convoluted as a pension credit application. While at peak times – at Paddington, for example – an eager overload of staff man barriers as if they were recreating a scene out of Les Miserables.
Free the Broadbottom One, for his fight is our fight.