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.
Update, via the comments:
Mags adds,
A sentiment echoed by Malc,
One could, I think, argue that if TfL directed their efforts to more obvious targets, then the weirdly small calming huts might not be felt necessary.
One might even view the creation of glorified dog kennels for stressed commuters as a kind of displacement activity, a symptom of a broader malaise. A way to not look directly at the actual problem. Which might entail all kinds of other inklings.
It seems likely that if passengers are feeling unnerved or unsafe, and in need of momentary calm, that may have quite a lot to do with the fact that their daily commute can 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.
But hey, let’s have more random uselessness instead. The bizarrely ineffective seems very much in fashion.
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.
It’s Monday. Y’all need a puppy. His name is Alder.
True also of men; the childishness merely manifests somewhat differently.
Modern aesthetic fashions rely far too much on novelty and “cleverness”. And novelty quickly palls. Architecture should serve the long term human needs of actual human beings, not the anti-human whims of architects and critics.
“It’s not about the nail”
Heh. Absolutely. What we’re seeing, on many fronts, is not, I think, just random uselessness. It’s not just a series of bizarrely ineffective decisions. It looks an awful lot like displacement activity. A way to not look directly at the actual problem. Which might entail all kinds of other inklings.
And so, the worse the situation gets, and it will, the more bewildering and farcical the subsequent activity is likely to be.
Performance art.
Architects have been going through a phase for over a century. Time for them to snap out of it or find something they’re better suited for. Rag-picking say.
As the constabulary is quick to assert.
Much of the new building work I see in town is for the local university, expanding its campus. For the most part, the new buildings are ostentatious and remarkably unattractive. Seen in daylight, they look like shit – and cheap. Despite price tags of £50 million, £80 million and so forth. They’re the kinds of buildings that it’s hard to feel identified with.
Clouseau fan clip:
https://streamable.com/0aouxf
No, it is just dazzle camouflage, a lot of U-boats in the area.
Another term that needs more exposure and discussion.
Thought for the day:
Previously and very much related:
Or not doing it at all.
See also this.
Attempted kidnapping? This should be the punishment for shoplifting. Kidnapping should mean death.
It’s as if the people who run our universities are themselves shit–not the intelligent, wise, morally elevated beings they declare themselves to be.
There is no reward among intellectuals for doing what has been done before: Status and fame come only to those who are “different”, and preferably in ways utterly at odds with normal, sane standards of beauty, utility, etc. Once every style that uplifts and nurtures human flourishing has been discovered and developed, all that’s left is, well, shit.
You don’t hate them enough.
It’s become a cliché at this point, a kind of grim joke, but the necessary sleight-of-hand, the neurotic omitting of ideologically inconvenient details, mugshots, etc., must be exhausting.
and it will continue and increase as long as the perpetrators get paid.
Singapore?
…the neurotic omitting of ideologically inconvenient details, mugshots, etc., must be exhausting.
Especially since a lot of people are now automatically assuming the race of “murderers of no appearance” – the absence is now a tell. Yet they continue to obfuscate.
In Japan every train and station is a calm space.
[ Post updated. ]
Evergreen:
Do any Japanese people read this blog?
[ Tips hat. ]
Yes, a few. Or at least people in Japan do.
The first such “uplift” I saw was the Secure Beneath the Watchful Eyes campaign. We got a lot of watchfulness but no security.
[ Walks into living room, finds Other Half watching Fantastic Voyage. ]
For those unfamiliar with the towering work in question.
THEY’RE SHRINKING RAQUEL WELCH.
Have just asked, “But where does the mass go?”
I’ve been told I’m overthinking this.
a skewed picture of who does and doesn’t commit crime
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/019916.html
in the novelization, Isaac Asimov took the time to explain that the antibodies could attack Raquel Welch because the protein shapes they were made to recognize matched her impressive chest.
DONALD PLEASENCE IS BEING DIGESTED.
I enjoyed that more than I expected. Not hugely, but enough.
pst, you’re remembering that wrong. The book states that the antibodies “hesitated” attempting to cover those compound curves. Then later, when she had to go out again, they turned her suit inside-out in an attempt to fool the antibodies. She was unhappy with her lumpy appearance.
That may have been the first Asimov I ever read.
Crazy eyes.
I am looking forward to watching this.
In my defense, that was over a half-century ago and I was a pre-teen at the time.
Differently lumpy.
I believe I’d already read his robot stories and Foundation series.
[ Checks bookshelf. ] No, that was two years later.
Some of those early SF movies had a certain charm which the current crop tend to lack. Or is that merely buried childhood impressions?
Re Evergreen…just an fyi…
Not that it’s not Evergreen. Just like Yogi Berra quotes that are things he said he never said, or so he said.
Raquel Squelch.
That gave me flashbacks to every interaction I had with the “ombudsman” at the Orlando Sentinel around that same c. 2008-2012 time period. The circular reasoning, the obtuseness, the “we can’t really say”, “we don’t really know”, “we can’t imagine…”, etc. etc. etc. If they get close to an answer, they get gator-arms. The answer is frustratingly just out of reach, gosh darn, dang-nabbit. The intellectual curiosity drying up at just the last moment.
Kiss me, you fool! OK, that was creepy AF. I was hoping that wasn’t a documentary documentary. I was hoping that was some actress playing Holmes but if what I read on wiki is true…that’s actually her. Our society is seriously fucked up.
I doubt it. Never been there myself, though I did some work with their air force training, but judging from what little I do know, it’s not a shithole country. They do have corporal punishment however. It’s just not administered ad hoc.
I worked with a guy who had been a pilot trainee in the Singapore Air Force. His stories of managing the international airspace permissions when flying an F-16 from (IIRC) Paya Labar were quite amusing.
Mad Magazine, of course, did a parody of “Fantastic Voyage”. About the only thing I remember was the typical 60s ” sciencey” name of the lab where the miniaturization was done. I dont remember the book name, but in Mad, it was LS/MFT. Now, in the real world, that was a cigarette ad slogan: Lucky Strike / Mighty Fine Taste. In the Mad world it was…
Lab Section For Making Folks Tiny.
Aren’t you glad I have such a great memory?
I was temporarily assigned to leading a troubled, ongoing project supporting their pilot training system. They did their training somewhere outside of Perth, Australia. Communication between Florida and Perth was a PitA. Meeting times, everyone was cranky. There were some professionalism issues and I had to juggle some female personnel problems. I was sure they were going to lose that contract. I’ve seen worse situations but not in a group that small. Somehow it went to completion.
The lack of a citation for unapproved mirth is troubling.
As long as they can get MAID there’s no infringement of rights, right?