Thanks for posting Brian. I hope that others realise they have the tools to do exactly what I did. We are media.

The tube could be staffed by polite and well trained people offering a superb service to the public, but at a price the public wouldn't be prepared to pay.

You get what you pay for.

Pete: how about selling it off and letting it go private to find out what the public is really prepared to pay?

Pete, the idea that we have to pay a lot more money to ensure such scum do not get jobs on the Tube is daft.

Needless to say, well done to the guy who filmed this. I hope the guard gets sacked. That would be a nice result. He's heard to remark that he hopes the man he was shouting at "falls under a train". Classy.

Jonathan, how would you ensure that 'scum' like this man don't get jobs on the tube?

How would you ensure that 'scum' don't get jobs anywhere at all?

The tube and many other public sector organistaions are shambolic and waste lots of our cash. There is no evidence that they employ more 'scum' than private organisations.

You don't do the free market and libertarian arguments any good at all by your rants about 'scum' people.

Being American, I naturally think in terms of Constitutional amendments. This case fits under one that I like:

The right of the people to possess electronic recording devices, to use them to record statements and events in public places, and to publish these recordings in print or electronically shall not be abridged, nor shall these records or devices be subject to confiscation by public authorities.

Jonathan, how would you ensure that 'scum' like this man don't get jobs on the tube? How would you ensure that 'scum' don't get jobs anywhere at all?

Easy really, by making it easy to fire people for cause. But if it is hard to sack people in the private sector, it is even harder in the public sector.

Myself, I'd settle for a personal apology and a short suspension without pay. There could be mitigating circumstances. I'm close to certain that 'Ian' gets much worse abuse than that during the average day for daring to work with the public; I'm surprised more people in his position don't lose it now and then. But if he doesn't say sorry then he is indeed scum.

What are the odds that photography on tube platforms is banned some time in the next six months, for a theoretically unrelated reason. ("Terrorism" is always good). I'm just cynical about these things.

The simple answer to this is to ban the use of video cameras on public transport. What's the betting this is proposed as a solution long before pathetically incapable jobsworths are banished from our lives?

The simple answer is to ban video cameras all together. North Korea doesn't have them, and are they really much worse off for it?

Pete, you object to my use of the word "scum", but what other word can one use for someone who treats a paying customer in this way?

A man gets his arm stuck in a door - and, rather than trying to help him, the member of staff swears at him.

Sound like a scum member of staff to me - and I have been in that sort of job all my life.

Decades (on and off) as a security guard on 12 hour (plus) shifts, and now in an amusement park selling tickets stuck in a box with the ( inevitable) collapse in health that this means.

"Pay them more" - what on Earth has that got to do with anything?

Tell you what I will swap my hourly rate with this London Underground employee.

I wonder which of us would be better off.

I thought filming on the underground is already banned. I could be wrong.

This is the flip-side of the surveillance society: we are watching back. I guess it was five or six years ago that cameras became ubiquitous in cell phones. The latest technology differentiator is video. I'm getting one of the new iPod nanos in the next couple of weeks. For the uninitiated, this is a device about the size and heft of a bic lighter with a VGA quality (640×480) video camera. It encodes in H.264, which is a great codec, and with iMovie I can put a video together in minutes and then stuff it on YouTube. They said the revolution will be televised: the real revolution is that everything will be televised. When one has a video recording device not much bigger than a packet of chewing gum, it makes no sense not to carry it with you everywhere.

I'm pretty sure photography on the Underground is already banned but I don't know how much it is official policy and how much is the whimsy of employees. The TFL website talks about filming permits. I have heard TFL staff talk about safety with regard to dazzling drivers with flashes. I even heard a tube driver announce on the PA that photography was not allowed "to protect the privacy of passengers." I LOLed.

Signs on the underground indicate that flash photography is banned on the underground for (no doubt reasonable) safety reasons. I once took a photo of a train in a tube station with the flash on my camera switched on, and a staff member politely told me not to use flash in future, but there was no objection to my taking photographs without a flash. Transport for London's website seems to confirm this. The section of the website that provides information about how professional photographers can obtain permits to file on the tube seems to suggest otherwise, but this is probably because they are trying to sell permits rather than actual rules.

Interestingly enough, the conditions for getting a permit state that LU rules forbid the photography of certain things. One of these is "assaults on passengers/staff". Whether this applies to everyone or just people with a permit, I do not know.

Thanks for that first link, Michael. I think I will print out that page and carry it around with me in the hope of thrusting it at any official who dares suggest otherwise.