great rant on Bossy Britain
It must be utter hell living in a large city over there.
From
The Guardian:
The sheer hell of bossy Britain
Last month, the public address system at Earl's Court tube station in London was served with a noise abatement order. Passengers, it seems, had had enough of being told the blindingly obvious. "They come over with these bizarre messages that you would know already unless you were simple," says Peter Wakeham, director of the Noise Abatement Society. "'Stand back or the train will run you over.' 'Don't lean on the doors.' 'Stand back from the opening doors.' 'Mind the gap.' 'Do this.' 'Don't do that.' We don't need to be told so many obvious things in these deafening ways. It's not rocket science."
There are reports that some London Underground staff have sensibly decided to satirise the bossy pointlessness of their colleagues' PA announcements. According to passenger website Going Underground, commuters at Holborn station waiting to board a train were recently told: "This is a train. Get on it. Go home. See you Monday."
Very funny. But don't any of these people realise that I can't savour the cadences of Milton's Paradise Lost on public transport any more because of the wittering of bossyboots and their satirists? If only the station staff, guards, drivers, buffet stewards, airline pilots, cabin crew and every other blowhard wo uld stop grabbing the intercom and telling me about every little thing going on in their lives, not to mention every little thing they think I should be doing, then perhaps I might find out what Satan whispered to Eve that blighted human life subsequently. Please be quiet!
Bossiness is not just aural. It is also written. As a straphanging commuter, I'm continually bombarded by notices on carriage walls. Please take your feet off the seat. Please move inside the carriage. Please turn down your personal stereo. And when I drive past my local primary, a sign flashes: "School. Slow down!" A few years ago, that sign would have consisted of a warning triangle featuring skipping children and one word: "School". The presumption was that once you were informed that you were nearing a high concentration of small humans in a machine of motorised death, you would need no more information before slowing down.
Now the presumption from our sign tsars is that Britons must have every last thing spelled out because we are uncivilised scum who were raised by wolves. No doubt, some of us were. After all, some of us had to be told not to urinate or wash our dogs in Diana's memorial fountain. As a result, our streets teem with fatuous, ugly signage and counterproductive verbosity. If you need to be told what should be evident, no amount of flashing signs and noisy injunctions will help you.
And Stuart Jeffries is just getting started... Heh...
Posted by DaveH at June 19, 2007 8:54 PM