Month: April 2003

Chaos on the trains this morning, for the first time in a while. I didn’t mind, of course, as it’s not like I had anywhere important to get to(!), and it was rather pleasant sitting out on the platform in the sun.

When I arrived at the station, the backlog of trains that had built up was causing the announcement system to go into overdrive. South West Trains introduced their Customer Information System about a year ago across my bit of the network. You know the sort of thing, those electronic boards that tell you when the next train is due, and an automated recorded announcement conveying the same information over the loudspeaker in a comforting generic English accent.

The system works fine when the trains are on time. Unfortunately, it’s not very good at predicting accurate delays when they aren’t. It gives out helpful information, like telling you that your train is expected 5 minutes ago. Also, and I think this is my favourite, when a train comes through your station but isn’t going to stop, the automated announcement over the speakers that you should “please stand clear [as] the next train is not due to stop at this station” quite often occurs after that train has passed through the station at high speed. I’ve often wondered if “South West Trains – Even The Announcements Are Late” might not be a good slogan for their advertising literature.

The other thing that always makes me smile is the fact that this computer system apologies to you when the trains are late. [“I am sorry to announce that the 07:30 service to London Waterloo is delayed by approximately 15 minutes. I am very sorry for the delay to your service.”] I mean, I’ve long suspected that all that “we’re very sorry for the delay to your service” stuff was a bit of a token gesture when it’s made by a human being, but when it’s a computer speaking, it is rather lacking as a gesture on the part of the train company (and, frankly, rather patronising. I’m an hour late for work? Well, the computer apologised to me, so that’s ok then…).

This morning, as I arrived at the station, I was greeted by continual automated loudspeaker announcements about the backlog of delayed trains. The recorded computer announcement was “extremely sorry for the severe delay” to one, but only “very sorry for the delay” to another. And the train I had been due to catch? Well, it was only “sorry for the delay” to that one. Somehow, I feel cheated. I’ll be writing a strongly worded letter, you know…

I suspect that Rob’s latest post is some kind of ironic joke in response to my post below… Then again, maybe he just hasn’t read this.

This list of the top 100 April Fool’s day hoaxes of all time is actually quite entertaining. What struck me while reading through it, though, is just how gullible some people (well, a lot of people actually) can be.

Well, there’s a lesson for anybody forwarding on all those Bill Gates will give you money emails, contemplating joining Cilla Black’s pyramid selling scheme, or sending me that piece from the Weekly World News about the time travelling wall street trader being busted for insider trading.

Oh, and I spotted a couple of good April Fool jokes myself yesterday. The Guardian hid theirs away in the Education section (something about Carole Caplin being appointed the education regulator: “to avoid picking someone with a conflict of interest, we picked someone with no experience or qualifications whatsoever… she’ll be bringing degrees in assisted showering and shopping to the traditional universities…”), and this RFC on setting the “evil bit” in IPv4 communications was doing the rounds at work yesterday. Ok, I admit it, I’m a geek…

Oh, and my favourite one out of the list of hoaxes is #69. It was apparently in The Times in 1991, and discussed a plan to double the capacity of the M25 by making it one way only during the week:

“On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays the traffic would travel clockwise; while on Tuesdays and Thursdays it would travel anti-clockwise.”

Fantastic. Many gullible people protested about this, but my favourite comment was this one: “A resident of Swanley, Kent was quoted as saying, ‘Villagers use the motorway to make shopping trips to Orpington. On some days this will be a journey of two miles, and on others a journey of 117 miles. The scheme is lunatic.'”

Wow. That didn’t take long. Rather glad I got my ticket yesterday, but now that it is sold out (or at least appears to be), I will only be really happy when I have those tickets in my grubby little hands. (That confirmation email is really not enough to satisfy my paranoia that something might have gone wrong…)
Can’t wait though.

By the sounds of it, from reading the forums on the official website, a lot of people have been buying multiple tickets in order to sell their leftovers on ebay and make a tidy profit. [After reports last year of people reselling tickets for several hundreds of pounds just before the event]. There are a load of tickets on offer on ebay, most of which are at double their face value already.

Personally, adopting the moral high ground for a second, I think this is a rather sad indictment of the greed-based society we live in, not to mention totally contrary to the spirit of the festival. I suppose I can only hope that so many extra tickets are floating around that supply actually outstrips demand and drives prices back down closer to face value.