Bright Lights, Big City
Lifted from the comments, it turns out that Transport For London is advertising assisted suicide. They seem to be giving it quite a push:
Westminster Death Tunnel sponsored by @dignityindying pic.twitter.com/fW0mbtqVRc
— Fleur Elizabeth (@fleurmeston) November 25, 2024
Very on-brand, I’d say. Almost too on-the-nose. I mean, if London’s buses and tube network were suddenly to be plastered with huge posters saying END IT ALL NOW, YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO, it wouldn’t be entirely inexplicable, or entirely dissonant with the customer experience.
It’s perhaps worth noting that Transport For London has a staff training centre, complete with fake station and platform, and “suicide pits,” where employees learn how to manage what are euphemistically referred to as “passengers taken unwell” or “disruptions to the tube service.” Events that occur on average once or twice a week.
In 2019, staff “intervened” in the self-destructive thoughts of 426 customers deemed “visibly in distress,” “up from 252 in the previous year.”
As EmC quips darkly in reply,
Update, via the comments:
The adverts for assisted suicide are now being partially covered, by persons unknown, with posters for a Samaritans helpline.
Consider this an open thread.
My Name is Academe, and I’m a Failure.
Barack Obama is talking about how to “rebuild a conversation” between people with different backgrounds and opinions. All this after he incessantly used his presidency to tear apart our society, particularly on racial lines.
Comment ensues:
More strong words:
Mr Wright exaggerates*, but he makes a very good point: Obama and his ilk incited racial hatred because it served their leftist purposes. He wants to find out how Americans can once again talk to each other? He can start by fucking off to somewhere else.
* Well, what he says may be entirely accurate with regard to his circle of friends, but it was not true that there were no racists and bigots to be found.
The eternal question: Are leftists human beings? The evidence suggests not.
This might be a clue to what’s behind all those “assisted suicide” advertisements.
NHS, the envy of the world.
Re: The assisted suicide posters in Lndon’s Underground.
The Lotus Eaters suggested that their target audience is MPs, since Parliament apparently has a vote on assisted suicide in the near future.
Regarding the highly-strung young lady mentioned here, Ms Hit-And-Run-Then-Meltdown-When-Caught, this:
Apparently, it’s “anti-social” to note vividly antisocial behaviour, or patterns thereof. Even when you’re the victim of that behaviour, presumably.
Progressives make excuses for shitty behaviour then pat themselves on the back. The victim of the shitty behaviour doesn’t count.
Well, declaring sympathy for the lawbreaker, the person who fled the scene, while – like the lawbreaker – showing zero interest in the person impacted and left behind, strikes me as somewhat perverse. Yet this is presented as a progressive position, the mark of a Good Person.
Granted, there’s a certain fascination in watching Miss Meltdown’s obnoxious, infantile, and utterly selfish behaviour; but contra JunLper, I’m struggling to feel much sympathy for a hit-and-run driver who gets hysterical in a way that seems practised – and angry, and vividly resentful – when caught and held accountable.
Perhaps I’m “anti-social” too.
JunLper, by the way, is a “transsexual journalist” who thinks oestrogen is making him curvy and alluring, and an enthusiast of communism. He claims, “rightwingers NEED to be able to harass people to exist online.”
[ Compiles tomorrow’s Ephemera. ]