Warning! This blog post contains imagery that some readers may find disturbing. Best read after breakfast.
——————————————————————
The transport secretary has got himself into hot water over remarks about jumpers on the railway lines.
In an interview, Philip Hammond suggested that the train service he used from Surrey to London was “pretty reliable, unless somebody jumps off the platform at Wimbledon, which happens with monotonous regularity.”
I have yet to meet a railway worker who hasn’t at some point made a similar remark. Nor, perhaps, the long suffering commuters who have to wait – yet again – for hours while the BTP carry out their investigations just in case there was a criminal element to the usually blindingly obvious suicide.
I recall standing with a couple of BTP constables exchanging black jokes as we waited for a doctor to come and declare life extinct on the remains of a young woman who had put her head on the line. What was left was barely recognisable – there was a torso and some bits of leg, the rest was either a congealed mush on the railhead or bits of brain, too small to recover, spattered along the ballast. We presumed that foxes had taken other parts or they were caught up under the train that had despatched this woman some time during the night. What we said was hardly sensitive – or politically correct – but when dealing with the sliced and diced, mutilated bits of what was once a human being, dark humour helps alleviate the tension somewhat.
All that said, Hammond’s remarks aren’t particularly insensitive. They are merely a comment that is probably factual – I don’t know Wimbledon that well, but there tend to be hot-spots when it comes to jumpers and if Wimbledon is one of them, then his comments merely acknowledge a truth. But, no, the professionally offended have to jump up and down and have a fit of the vapours; the truth be hanged.
His remarks were condemned as insensitive by mental health professionals. There are around 200 suicides a year on the railways.
Yes, and I really wish they would have the sensitivity not to do it on the railway lines, causing distress and anguish for the poor driver and leaving a dismembered, scattered mess for some poor sod to pick up – the parts, that is, that the foxes haven’t already snaffled for a tasty bite of lunch. How’s that for insensitive?
But, then, this isn’t about suicides per se, is it?
Dr Peter Byrne, from The Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: “There was very little mention of mental health in the Government spending review and it is a pity to hear these kinds of views come through in such ill-considered remarks.”
Nice bit of shroud waving there Dr Byrne.
Nothing to add to this except to say you’re absolutely right. I have often said far worse than this in relation to railway suicides, I would dispute that it means I’m insensitive to the mentally ill. I’ve seen mental disturbance in my own family so I know how unpleasant it is but I’m damned if I’m going to stop making black jokes or expressing irritation the next time someone disrupts my shift by jumping in front of a train, just because some professional concern troll doesn’t like it.
A key part of my pastoral advice to my first year undergraduates was to inform them that, if they were going to kill themselves, paracetamol would guarantee a slow and agonising death, and that throwing themselves under trains or off motorway bridges was selfish and inconsiderate. None of them ever did any of these things. Result.
And if they want seriously macabre humour, the professionally offended should try listening to the jokes of the clean-up crew called to an RTC, including some real gems about the separated head landing half a field away. It’s a survival instinct.
Not necessarily suicide if the pedestrians outside Wimbledon station were a guide. I’ve been gone a few years now and it may have changed but I used to hate having to go into that part of London because it really took a determined effort not to run any of the daft bastards over. Up the road in Putney the survival instinct still worked but it seemed to be defective around Wimbledon. The phone/iPod/overpriced latte/newspaper seemed to be vastly more important to them than such tedious matters as remembering not to step off the kerb into the fucking traffic. Possibly this behaviour carries on inside Wimbledon station and people sometimes try to get directly from platform 6 to platform 7 without using the stairs and forget about the trains.
My cousin, as you know LR, did exactly that 25 months back. I had no hesitation in calling it what it was – that he splattered himself all over the train track by going for a walk at 6am miles from home by shoving his head on the line. He was a bit of a selfish git in life anyway, though we still loved him. No, there’s no time for sentimentality I’m afraid. It’s just one of those things.
Angry Exile.
You’re right a lot of people get killed on the railway this way or because they’re drunk. Then it’s common for someone to sound off about how unsafe the line is and advocate some ridiculously impractical and highly expensive safety measure or other. This feeds into the excessive safety culture which has helped to increase expenditure in the last decade or so and make a lot of otherwise useful investments unafordable.
Sigh… Atheism is not a belief, nor is it a religion. It is a lack of belief in gods.
Oh really? Atheists are the most narrow minded fundamentalists of all. Well, maybe not as bad as radical Muslims.
You appear to have posted this under the wrong entry.
The majority of atheists are no more fundamentalist than the majority of Christians or Muslims.
Still, when a militant atheist straps on a bomb belt to murder believers, do let me know 😉