Remember the Railway Children – a very young Jenny Agutter? I do. Okay, okay, I’m calm now… Ahem. Well, someone has made a complaint…
Forty-two years after it was released, classic family film The Railway Children has prompted its first complaint to the British Board of Film Classification.
“The correspondent was concerned that children may be encouraged to play on railway tracks as a result of seeing the film,” the BBFC’s annual report reveals.
I think we have reached a point where despair no longer cuts it. Our society has now descended into the pits of cretinism. In forty two years, this film has singularly failed to encourage swathes of children to play on the railway lines, so it is highly unlikely to be such an enticement now. I mean, are the little scrotes most likely to trespass on the railway watching it anyway? And if it does have this effect, look on it as Darwin in action. Frankly, if it wasn’t for the inevitable delays and the trauma to the driver and the poor sods who have to clear up the mess, I’d encourage the twerp who complained to go put their head on the line. They would instantly double the country’s collective IQ.
AMEN the more of these morons who lose their lives trying out their excruciating theories the better for all of the rest of us!
I wonder if the complainant was one of those who would also have us believe that Gandalf the grey is real and Winston Churchill is a figment of our imaginations, as revealed in a study of school children some time ago!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1577511/Winston-Churchill-didnt-really-exist-say-teens.html
I almost choked on my cereal the day I read this little delight!
What exactly get’s taught in our schools!
The timing of this complaint would appear to imply that today’s children are more likely than preceding generations to leap into the path of oncoming trains as a result of seeing this film. Sadly, since independent thought has been for decades increasingly stifled by progressive education while the Nanny State attempts to render obsolete our remaining instincts of self-preservation, this may well be true.
It’s not just a world of cretins; it’s a world in which, for some elements of humanity at least, evolution appears to be operating in reverse.
In 2011, Nesbit was accused of lifting the plot of the book from The House by the Railway by Ada J. Graves, a book first published in 1896 and serialised in a popular magazine in 1904, a year before The Railway Children first appeared – Wikipedia
Well at least the complaints are coming in a bit sooner now!
Actually I am quite surprised that the modern right hasn’t advocated that “The Railway Children” be burned as its author was a prominent socialist and founder of the Fabians.
From my time spent working on the railways (admittedly urban ones) it would seem that the vast majority of under-18s seen trespassing thereon were doing so for the purposes of intentionally defacing property. What astounds me, to this day, is the lengths to which the railway operating company would go in order to AVOID harming these people. Now I’m not saying you should aim to intentionally harm these people, but disadvantaging the travelling (paying) public to protect them? Something’s wrong. The culprits KNEW they were in the wrong and were rubbing everybody’s noses in it. The permanent-way gangs, on the other hand, knew exactly how to deal with the problem.
That being said, a kid caught “trespassing” on railway property with no obvious intent of causing harm may be doing so out of curiosity and could end up being someone who becomes the next generation of railway staff. A bit of discretion, friendly respect and pointers in the right direction could pay dividends long-term. The attitude “children stay away from, and fear, railways” is probably more counterproductive than any vandalism and trespass to date. The right attitude? Surely something like “Railways are part of your world and your life. Learn to respect them and reap the benefits, but be careful because they can be deadly if you don’t have your wits about you. Likewise roads.”
Legal precedent. Herrington v BRB 1972. Ever since then, anyone killed on the railways even if trespassing has a case against the land owner. That’s why.
Agreed totally on that being the reason: I didn’t phrase what I said very well! I suppose what I was trying to say was I find it astoundingly stupid that a legal precedent has succeeded in being established for acting in this way and that just about everybody has suffered since then. (And my view on this extends to the way landowners in general – and not just on the railways – may be held liable for harm, even if unintended, to trespassers).
I know this is a slightly different issue, but what’s even worse is that we’re heading towards a situation where railway companies are so tied up in the minutiae of evading minor (and often imaginary) “harms” that they are prone to taking their eye off the big problems. For example:
(1) Minor cut/scratch sustained by staff on-shift: reportable, to be investigated and will result in much wasted time and further silly directives (often causing unintended further harm, and certainly further expense which will be passed on to passengers or taxpayers).
(2) Brand new multi-million pound signalling systems, unsafe by deficiencies in design AND implementation, still harbouring a known intrinsic logic defect: quietly and irreversibly rushed into passenger service to avoid embarrassment relating to a high-profile sporting event.
“Safety” laws, particularly as they have pertained to the railways in recent times, seem to be having less and less to do with genuine safety (especially that which ought to be foremost – i.e. that of the passengers). Their main purpose seems to be establishing a paperwork trail of “blame” which can absolve all individual managers of liability in court, since despite them having often acted in technically-inept, not to mention autocratic, ways they have done so “according to the correct process”. A “safety case” document and its lengthy and implausibly-precise statistical manipulations, performed on raw starting probabilities effectively plucked out of the air, might make for a large and weighty tome which impresses politicians and mathematicians, however it is of no practical use in prevention of accidents. It is merely a bureaucratic sledgehammer to sidestep a need for “sound engineering judgment” in matters where no engineer worth his salt would have granted acceptance.
A lot of good people work on the railways but sadly they are by and large under the cosh of the charlatans who claim to be “in charge”, at least for their three-year stint on the “corporate merry-go-round”. I’d never willingly go back to working for them, which in many ways is a great shame since I originally did so out of personal interest in- and respect towards- the railways (and a certain railway in particular).
A clarification regarding the above: my expression “individual managers” refers to those at, or near, director level. Line-managers and their ilk (often but not always ex-operational or technical staff who have been somewhat unwillingly “promoted” to a position they neither suit nor enjoy) are often the target of blame deflection, despite frequently having been instrumental in minimising the impact/severity of the problem.
I suppose these problems largely arise because many of the people “running” the railway companies are “career managers” in the same ilk as “career politicians”. They genuinely do see the railway itself as a (begrudgingly necessary) inconvenience to their “business”. They don’t know or care about the passengers, the staff, the engineering or the history. And when they get rumbled/get fed up/want a pay rise, they simply use their “professional networks” to find another pseudo-public-sector organisation to infest. They talk solely in terms of “assets” (by which they mean track, signals, rolling stock, ballast, etc. etc.), “resources” (staff to the rest of us) and “customers” (they would be the passengers). And they do it in all seriousness – even when specifically addressing front-line staff during “employee relations” exercises. You know something’s wrong when a director renames the Maintenance department “Asset Performance” because he doesn’t like the word “maintenance” and believes it to have negative connotations involving dirt, oil and grease.
Anyway, I’ll stop ranting now!