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.

Brendan O’Neill on life in an age of euphemism:

An assault. All cheered on by ladies of a certain kind.

Says Mr O’Neill,

At which point, the reliably ludicrous LBC presenter James O’Brien comes to mind.

With all of the earnestness he could conjure, Mr O’Brien described the intruders as akin to “climate refugees… moving from inhabitable to habitable,” before referring to Ceuta as “nowhere near as inhospitable” as Morocco. Despite Ceuta’s climate being indistinguishable from, say, Tangier or Tétouan.

“There was something about the footage that shook me to my core,” said he. Though the scenes of mass invasion and subsequent looting and disorder – described as a “wave of humanity” – were much less of a concern to Mr O’Brien than the prospect of some onlookers, and perhaps quite a few local residents, regarding the violation as less than ideal.

And clearly, these immensely vibrant young men, overwhelmingly of fighting age and remarkably unencumbered by women or identifying documents, are merely using other people’s cars to start fires of neighbourliness. Arson being the universal language of warm feelings.

It’s all one big expression of gratitude. Of common humanity. The ennobling effects of which can be found with little effort.

Because sharing and caring, right?

And when the uninvited newcomers swarming through your streets start desecrating your ancestors’ graves while hurling rocks at you, it’s just a sign that they want to get to know you better.

I’m reminded of the scene in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which Zaphod Beeblebrox visits the headquarters of the eponymous publication, which is under attack, being bombarded from orbit. Despite the thunderous explosions, he encounters obliviousness. In disbelief, and trying to be heard over the explosions, he shouts, “Do you know your building’s being bombed?!”

As a summary of our times, and in more ways than one, it does have a certain resonance.

Update, via the comments:

Chow Bag quotes this,

And replies,

Well, setting aside Mr O’Brien’s limited grasp of the Mediterranean climate, he did bring into relief one of the key ideological differences of our time, one that blurs into fantasy and psychodrama.

I mean, if you can watch the footage of the invasion and the almost immediate looting, arson, assaults, etc., and feel – or pretend to feel – an urge to indulge the invaders, to side with them over the people whose neighbourhoods, homes and businesses are being trashed and plundered, that’s… quite something.

It’s a line that divides, and in a significant way. It does suggest a rather fundamental incompatibility.

Via Pst314 in the comments, a tale of suboptimal decisions:

Says the cross-dressing man in the floral pinafore.

This American man, pretending to be a woman, fled the US for the Netherlands for “asylum.”

Now he regrets it because of all the Muslim migrants who violently target him.

You can’t make this stuff up.pic.twitter.com/MBizjmHa3A

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 14, 2026

Our cross-dressing chap, whose name is not disclosed, fled some unspecified oppression in Mr Trump’s America and sought asylum in the Netherlands. As one does.

And so, our cross-dressing man now finds himself in the country’s primary asylum reception centre, sited in the village of Ter Apel, and where his fellow seekers of asylum – chiefly, Muhammadan gentlemen from Morocco and Algeria – are an actual danger, not an imagined one.

“There’s a bunch [of migrants] who think that queer people should be beaten,” says he. “It is too dangerous to walk from here to the grocery store because of the people who live in the camp.”

Sufficiently so, it seems, for the Red Cross and other aid agencies to have withdrawn from the encampment due to the violence, arson, numerous stabbings, and so forth.

A longer video, from Dutch PowNews, can be found here.

Readers will note the displays of the raised middle finger, a universal indicator of warm feelings and good intentions.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Consider this an open thread. I’ll set the ball rolling.

 

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Attention, rail commuters. I bring fresh hell.

Britain is an embarrassment. wtf is this? pic.twitter.com/nfD17EHtu7

— Hazel Appleyard (@HazelAppleyard_) July 5, 2025

You see,

And remember, if you’re gay, everything is about TRANSVESTISM, VAMPING AND GLITTER.

Oh, and for those of you mystified by the chanted number,

Should you see something untoward during your journey.

No, don’t go. I have more.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.