11 October, 2009
Living dangerously on the DLR
Following its recent rebuilding, the Tower Gateway terminus of the Docklands Light Railway has only one track, but with a platform on either side. The idea of this odd arrangement is that doors on both sides of the train will be opened, with departing passengers entering from one platform as arriving passengers leave via the other.
All very clever, but it does mean that passengers have to be instructed in the expected procedure. So as the train approaches the terminus, the conductor, or "passenger service agent" to give them their full title, announces that "customers should leave by the right-hand doors".
Except for one chap who, for a bit of variety, added, "For those who can't tell their left from their right, it's the side where there are no passengers waiting on the platform". A good-natured chuckle rippled through the carriage, but even as I joined in I found myself thinking, "Brave but possibly foolhardy man. It will only take one humourless disability-rights tosser to complain about abuse of the dyslexic, dyspraxic or dys-whatever it is causes people to confuse left and right for you to be out on your ear."
What a sad world we live in.
Going off at a tangent, we seem to have a new station announcer on the DLR. If "station announcer" is the correct term, for presumably she's actually sitting in the control room at Poplar. The new speaker is from Norn Iron, and on the scale of impenetrability which runs from Kathy Clugston to John Cole, her accent is definitely more towards the John Cole end of the spectrum. Personally I don't have much trouble understanding the Norn Iron dialect — a skill doubtless passed down in the genes from my Belfast great-grandparents — but I have to admit my inner racist thug does derive a certain malicious pleasure from watching the assorted Bengalis, Nigerians and Chinese passengers around me obviously struggling to to understand what she's saying.
Seems a fair return for the number of times I've had to put with platform announcements
which might just as well have been in the announcer's native Yoruba, Urdu or Trenchtown Patois.
All very clever, but it does mean that passengers have to be instructed in the expected procedure. So as the train approaches the terminus, the conductor, or "passenger service agent" to give them their full title, announces that "customers should leave by the right-hand doors".
Except for one chap who, for a bit of variety, added, "For those who can't tell their left from their right, it's the side where there are no passengers waiting on the platform". A good-natured chuckle rippled through the carriage, but even as I joined in I found myself thinking, "Brave but possibly foolhardy man. It will only take one humourless disability-rights tosser to complain about abuse of the dyslexic, dyspraxic or dys-whatever it is causes people to confuse left and right for you to be out on your ear."
What a sad world we live in.
Going off at a tangent, we seem to have a new station announcer on the DLR. If "station announcer" is the correct term, for presumably she's actually sitting in the control room at Poplar. The new speaker is from Norn Iron, and on the scale of impenetrability which runs from Kathy Clugston to John Cole, her accent is definitely more towards the John Cole end of the spectrum. Personally I don't have much trouble understanding the Norn Iron dialect — a skill doubtless passed down in the genes from my Belfast great-grandparents — but I have to admit my inner racist thug does derive a certain malicious pleasure from watching the assorted Bengalis, Nigerians and Chinese passengers around me obviously struggling to to understand what she's saying.
Seems a fair return for the number of times I've had to put with platform announcements
which might just as well have been in the announcer's native Yoruba, Urdu or Trenchtown Patois.
# posted by Edwin Greenwood @ 10:28 
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"A good-natured chuckle rippled through the carriage, but even as I joined in I found myself thinking, "Brave but possibly foolhardy man. It will only take one humourless disability-rights tosser to complain about abuse of the dyslexic, dyspraxic or dys-whatever it is causes people to confuse left and right for you to be out on your ear.""
That's exactly what they want us all to think though...
That's exactly what they want us all to think though...
'Seems a fair return for the number of times I've had to put with platform announcements
which might just as well have been in the announcer's native Yoruba, Urdu or Trenchtown Patois.'
Spot on- but in victimhood poker, being Black or Pakistani usually trumps being Irish (especially if you're the 'wrong sort' of Northern Irish).
BTW our spooks in MI5 had similar comprehension problems with northern Celts- the MI5 historian Prof Andrew has some sport at their expense in reporting the difficulties they had when listenining to phonetaps of Mick McGahey, especially when he was well lubricated!
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which might just as well have been in the announcer's native Yoruba, Urdu or Trenchtown Patois.'
Spot on- but in victimhood poker, being Black or Pakistani usually trumps being Irish (especially if you're the 'wrong sort' of Northern Irish).
BTW our spooks in MI5 had similar comprehension problems with northern Celts- the MI5 historian Prof Andrew has some sport at their expense in reporting the difficulties they had when listenining to phonetaps of Mick McGahey, especially when he was well lubricated!
# posted by 
: 12 October, 2009 18:07
: 12 October, 2009 18:07 << Home
