The sting and the police
October 2011
There has been a recent spate of incidents involving people being hit by trains near where I live. Call me naive but I find myself asking how this can possibly happen. There are really only three ways one can get hit by a train. The first is to be thrown in front of one and that is only going to happen if you have upset someone called Louis-Rico-Gonzales-Pablo-Rodriquez from Columbia by failing to pay him for the white powder he provided. The second is if you throw yourself in front of one, in which case you are a selfish prick. The only other way is by accident. And I’m sorry but to get accidentally hit by a train involves stupidity on an immense level.Occasionally I hear stories about people who have driven onto level crossings and been squashed to death. How anyone manages that is beyond me. As far as I know all level crossings have barriers that come down about 6 hours before the train actually crosses it. Even if there isn’t a barrier in front of a level crossing, if you are going to attempt to drive across it without first checking to see whether or not several hundred tonnes of metal travelling at 100 mph is coming towards you, then you probably shouldn’t be allowed out in public anyway.
It’s not like they are hard to spot. I mean when standing on a platform or a level crossing, you can hear the train coming from a mile away. The vibrations carry along a rail for some time before the train is visible and if that doesn’t give it away the sight and sound of such an enormous mass barrelling towards you should give you some clue. If you are still oblivious, the loud horn that blares out from them should. That sound never fails to send shivers down my spine.
One of the recent stories involved a woman being hit whilst retrieving her handbag that she’d apparently dropped on the track. A couple of things struck me (no pun intended) as odd about that story. Firstly, how is it possible to drop something on the rails? It suggests that she was, in fact, standing too close to the platform edge in the first place and ignoring the yellow lines and constant reminders from the Tannoy to stand well back. It also struck me as slightly odd that she was attempting to retrieve it herself. Personally, if I was clumsy or stupid enough to drop something on the railway track, I’d go and find someone who worked at the station and ask them very nicely in grunts and whistles whether they would be so kind as to get one of those long sticks with a claw on the end and retrieve it for me.
Even if I was stupid enough to reach down and grab something off the rails, I have enough self preservation to keep my ears and eyes peeled for oncoming trains. In fact I did once, as a toddler, drop my comfort blanket on the track whilst being bundled onto a train. I never saw it again. It still hurts me.
So without wanting to sound unsympathetic, I don’t have any sympathy for people who get hit by trains. The only people I have sympathy for are the other passengers at the platform who have to witness the horror of someone getting detonated into (and presumably covered in) bite sized pieces by the train, the driver who can do nothing but look on helplessly as they pulverise another human being, and the police who have the thankless task of first having to pick bits of ex-human off the railway line and then inform the family of the victim that their loved one probably won’t be coming home for dinner. All these people will be scarred for life.
Of course, the poor police officers who have to pick the severed head of Mr. or Mrs. Idiot of the track then have to go back to the police station and spend the rest of the decade doing paperwork. They are then called out and see old Mrs. Grizzle who, at 96 years old, felt the need to dial 999 because she couldn’t remember where she left the jar of marmalade. They then have to spend the evening prowling the streets and getting abuse from illegitimate little pricks whose parents were too stoned to teach them simple things like discipline and respect. Then they get abuse from the media and the general public because they can’t control these trouble makers. They then get into even more trouble when they do use force against trouble makers because they will be branded human rights violators who use heavy handed tactics which, naturally, is unacceptable.
If that wasn’t bad enough, they now have to deal with cuts being enforced by the government. Cuts deemed necessary largely thanks to the previous government who spent all our money.
I’m personally of the opinion that any man or woman who serves their country should be given certain privileges and treated in higher esteem than lazy feckless wasters who spend their entire life sponging off the rest of us. And illegal immigrants who always seem to get free housing and benefits.
So when I read about senior officers being forced to take early retirement and how they are freezing pay and freezing recruitment and instead employing those hobby-bobby community support officers who, I’m sorry, are about as useful as a pedal powered wheel chair, it makes me rather cross.
Surely if there is a need to cut anything in the emergency services it should be the fire department. There can only be so many cats that need rescuing from trees. Plus they are the ones always go on strike over pay. The police aren’t allowed to do that. Of course I don’t want to upset Fireman Sam and if my house burns down tomorrow I’ll feel a bit silly so how about making cuts to the government instead? There are far too many pompous, pointless, pathetic, petulant, patronising pricks in the government. Forgive the alliteration there but there are far too many of them who we could do without. And it’s these morons who are making the stupid decisions where to cut spending.
As part of the cost cutting measures, police officers are now no longer entitled to free public transport. This is a bit daft because the deal was basically that any officer (whether they were on duty or not) was expected to intervene if they were in the vicinity of any trouble – thereby keeping the trains safe. So now if an off-duty police officer witnesses some idiot throw themselves in front of a train, they can happily turn a blind eye and run for cover before they get hit by pieces of flying idiot.
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