Offering Relief
Or, Scenes From Modern Britain, a possible series:
We’re trialling a calm space at Ealing Broadway station for four weeks 💙
From today, you’ll find a quieter space for customers who may benefit from a calmer environment during their journey.
What we learn from the trial will help us understand how we can make our network… pic.twitter.com/mRFiD2vtvM
— TfL (@TfL) September 4, 2026
The purpose of the magnificent facility seen above, a “compact sensory support space” sited at Ealing Broadway station, is to “make public transport in London fairer, safer, more inclusive”:
“The aim of the pod,” we’re told, “is to provide… a dedicated, low-stimulation space where customers can pause and take a moment away from some of the noise and activity of the station.”
And what’s more,
Which possibly hints at the actual uses to which said pod will most likely be put.
The possibility that any emotional fatigue among passengers may be due to particular kinds of “noise and activity” – say, increasingly routine aberrant behaviour and public indecency – does not appear to have been pondered.
Needless to say, a lively thread ensues.
Via Tim Newman.
Readers will, of course, recall Transport For London’s previous efforts at uplifting its customers.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
So it’s a toilet with a wall missing?
Some helpful illustrations as to possible functions are provided in the thread.
The TfL replies to customer enquiries may also entertain.
The purpose of the magnificent facility seen above, a “compact sensory support space” sited at Ealing Broadway station, is. to launder taxpayer money to approved people. Fixed it.
Or they could just deal with the ferals and fare dodgers instead.
It’s a Wendy house for adult children.
I mean, it’s a dog house, innit?
I’m not fat, I’m a rebel for the cause. ‘Cause I like to eat. A lot.
Just blew it.
Speaking of TfL and the joys of commuting in London.
“Don’t blame me,” says the driver with remarkable haste.
Call me old fashioned, but I think it’s generally helpful to find out what it is that’s happened before insisting, quite vehemently, that it wasn’t your fault.
More vibrant TfL scenes.
Why does US Secretary of War Hegseth keep making fun of the Canadian Forces?
Total mystery.
See also
these guysthis guy who claims GLP-1 meds are fascist because they genocide fat people. As they actually increase the odds of a fat person living longer, I may be wrong, but losing weight voluntarily* and being killed are not exactly the same thing.Meanwhile, back to the transport issue,
OK, I guess, as long as one is not epileptic.
*(offer void in gulags)
The unattractive pattern hides the filth, I believe.
As I was saying.
Mr Burkett.
They are children incapable of controlling their emotions. We agree.
True enough, but can be done without inducing seizures, e,g,, oriental carpet type patterns (in general).
Lift your feet.
[ Hoovers. ]
Stop importing people from incompatible cultures!
It’s one of these for people.
See also deafness activists who say the same about cures for deafness.
Remember when that described the entirety of public transport?
Where can we find examples of seizure-inducing oriental carpets?
Speaking of seizure inducing, a hospital in Melbourne, hopefully not the neurology wing.
‘[C]onfine them within the narrow compass of the life they already know, which happens to be the malign, if unacknowledged, purpose of making education “relevant” to children’s lives.’ — Theodore Dalrymple, ‘Miracle: A British School That Works‘, City Journal, Summer 2026
Well, indeed.
And if TfL directed their efforts to more obvious targets – morons blasting out loud music in carriages instead of using headphones, morons having loud and grating phone conversations, ever more brazen fare-dodging (which makes the law-abiding feel like mugs), general thuggery and so forth, then the calm spaces might not be felt necessary.
A child’s elementary school art class project.
Assuming we can lift out feet. let alone even have them, is awfully abelist.
This is a big, big problem with art. Quirky, odd designs, themes, etc. can seem fine or whatever on paper, but when the art in question will be public facing, something that everyone will have to look at, for some every single day, there must be a differentiation. It’s not whether or not you like it, it’s about being confronted with it constantly.
A cute commercial jingle or novelty song or catchy tune is frequently unobjectionable the first or second time heard, but if that tune goes viral for whatever reason and you are being exposed to it over and over again, its otherwise benign or obscured flaws become amplified.
La la la la la la la
The TfL calming hut, and the seizure-inducing upholstery, are both achieving their primary goal. To transfer taxpayer money to the unproductive. See also California High (i.e. No) Speed Rail.
re the activist-claimed “genocide” of fat people and deaf people. The genocide applies to the fat and the deafness because in the activist mind, they are fat, or deaf, or trans, or whatever is the latest thing first; people is secondary. It is that qualifier they cling to as their badge of specialness. I also suspect that if the qualifier is sufficiently debilitating they tend to cling to it less. I could be wrong, but it seems the blind are not as militant about preserving their state than the deaf.
As to the open portaloo in the post – yeah how long before the various flavors of vibrancy are fighting with each other for possession of it, or burning it down with open cooking fires.
fat people:
I used to know fat people who strenuously dismissed all evidence that a keto diet, or a diet which drastically limited carbs in favor of protein and fat, could enable them to lose weight.
I think they preferred to think of themselves as helpless victims of circumstance: Anything which suggested that, through self discipline, they could alter their circumstances, was displeasing and threatening.
Something which needs to be restated frequently:
The school runs like the public schools I attended in the 60s – save for having to wear a uniform, there was always a fairly strict dress code. And no tolerance for bad behavior (ok, there were still teens who went to the farside of the athletic field to smoke, but mob beatdowns or violence against teachers were wholly unknown)
Clear expectations on behavior and learning the academic fundamentals – something within reach of all public schools right now, would go miles in solving most issues.
It’s not a question of feasibility, it is a question of will.
BTW — two of my grandkids … now in 8th and 9th grade … go here. A public school but one that has to be applied for (and you can get kicked out of for not maintaining grades or for behavioral issues) and runs fairly like the Michaela one. Includes a strict dress code rather than uniforms and I like that Mondays the students dress in “professional attire”.
Of course, none of that has anything to do with consistent top rankings, right?
Trajectory.
Off a tall building in Gaza?
Quidquid id est timeo Danaos et dona ferentis.
I sense a Samuel L Jackson meme approaching…
.
True geese
Enjoying the moment.
Ah, the Austin. Good old memories. A lot of buildings hereabouts have that sort of architecture – modernism in its angly-wangly phase. IIRC, that bit you’re showing is just part of the car park, never meant to be salubrious.
Melbourne was economically in the doldrums for a lot of the 20th century, and it was only with the Kennett government to the end of that time that it become wealthy again. The inflow of money under Jeff Kennett – and his obvious penchant for statement architecture – resulted in a couple of new buildings around the city, most well known being Federation Square, which has similar seizure-inducing angles.
Evidently architects were going through a phase at the time.
Don’t get any ideas.
Only a racist would notice the problem.
That’s a good representation of the argument. And also a good critique of the current state of women in this country.
Somehow I think that women living hard lives in the past were considerably less childish than modern women, and the men arguing against female suffrage 100 years ago were talking about their pampered wives and daughters.
I can appreciate the aesthetics of that building while at the same time recognizing that it resembles wreckage after an earthquake and as such is quite jarring, especially at that scale.
The architects of the past relied on golden proportions for a reason — they were easy on the mind and on the soul, which is why nicely proportioned arches in a cloister have a calming effect.
I look up “moquette” and find that it signifies that type of fabric common on public transport.
I don’t understand why they’re using the term for the seats themselves. What am I missing? Are the other seats made of hard molded plastic?
Also, why is the presence of those seats significant? They’re more accessible? No step-up or step-down? They face sideways so you don’t have to sidle in to sit down?
That does seem to be very much part of the thinking – or rather, non-thinking; and hence the weird displacement activity, I suppose. The glorified dog kennels for stressed commuters.
But again, if any passengers are feeling unnerved or unsafe, that may have quite a lot to do with the fact that their daily commute may entail encounters with people openly smoking crack on the Tube, or people vigorously shagging on a moving bus, or vibrant individuals enlivening train platforms via the medium of machete fights.
You know, little things like that.
This. It’s not all of it but it’s a big, big part of it.