Tuesday, October 11, 2005

What the tannoy should have said

by Suw on October 11, 2005

We regret to inform you that, due to years of chronic underfunding and shameful mismanagement, there will be significant delays on your journey home this evening. When the train does finally turn up it will be overcrowded and hot, and you may well feel ill within moments of boarding. If you do faint, don't worry as you will be so tightly wedged in that you'll be unable to actually hit the floor. London Underground Limited has absolutely no regrets about this whatsoever as we've been creaming off the profits for years now and have a nice little villa out on St Lucia to which we'll be taking early retirement and our golden handshake very soon.
Normal service will not be resumed at any point in your lifetime or ours, as the system is in such a state of terminal collapse that nothing short of a miracle can save it. And we don't mean the sort of 'miracle' that any mere mortal transport 'czar' can achieve, but a full-on deity-driven bells, whistles and chorus of angels miracle. We think you'll agree that that is unlikely to occur.
We would also like to apologise for the chaos caused by the new signals which don't work, rolling stock with buggered brakes, and engineering work which overruns because half the sub-sub-sub-contractors are either taking a piss, sleeping, or making a brew. We'd like to apologise, but we won't because frankly we don't give a shit. However, as we think cars are really great we're going to encourage you not to use public transport at all. We hope you won't notice that we all have lots and lots shares in the oil and automotive industries.
To ensure that your journey home is as miserable as possible, we have been working closely with our colleagues at Network Rail on a countrywide harmonisation project so that their standards are as astonishingly low as ours. This means that whilst we make sure you miss your intended train, they make sure that the one after that is cancelled. Because of the multi-platform capacity at many mainline stations, it will be possible for Network Rail to further confuse and delay you by repeatedly changing platforms for the train they previously told you was cancelled so that you manage to miss it anyway. Any homocides you commit during this period will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Your safety and security is paramount, and we aim to keep the British public transport system 100 per cent safe and secure by making it 100 per cent impossible to use. To this end, we have extended rush 'hour'. It will now begin at 6am and end at 12 midnight, with a special new peak 'Super Rush Hour, Version 2.hell' to replace the old version. Please ensure your immune system is fully up to date as you will be spending a lot of time nose-to-nose with lurghi-ridden commuters.
Should you need any help, please do not hesitate to ask station staff, who will have precisely bugger-all information and be entirely unable to assist. Should you need to actually get anywhere, we suggest that you buy a horse.

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