Suburban Chimp - Finance & Social Commentary

The social commentary section of this website has been included to allow a platform to ‘vent off’ or gripe about all the things that drive us nuts in the world which do not fit in to the environmental areas of this site.

Although Suburban Chimp covers a wide range of environmental topics, including consumerism and social responsibility there are these odd topics that don’t quite fit in, but are also desperately important to the well being of the general populous. OK, so when I say ‘desperately important’ then I don’t mean desperate like climate change, desperate like people starving and living on $1 a day, but desperate in a different way. I need a sounding board, a flippant sounding board it may be, but a sounding board it is. Let’s move on to the main event.

Trains. Most environmentalists get this soft warm fuzzy when they start talking about trains, whilst most commuters get the symptoms of a nervous breakdown or a heart attack. Basically trains in the UK could be better. I’m sure there will be plenty of opportune for me to spout off on the punctuality and cost of an ever increasingly shabby service, along with overcrowding and the reduction of scheduled services. (sneaky rant out of the way)

Regardless of all these negative aspects of train travel it is still the main option of travel for me to get to work every day and yet there is even more annoyances that one must suffer, namely the other passengers!

It seems that there is a whole bunch of people in society who don’t appear to have travelled on a train before, or have been let out in polite society before. Last night for instance the carriage sounded like an amusement arcade because someone was playing a game on their phone or games console with the sound on. What sort of idiot feels that this is appropriate behaviour? Same goes for the ‘creatures’ who test out new ring tones on the train. What is going on in their brains? Not to mention the beeping of constant text messaging, phone calls with irritating people talking loudly, stupid people having even stupider conversations and other people coughing, sniffing, practically dying on the train who sound like they are in desperate need of medical attention. Read a book, read a paper. If you have to get your laptop out and work, (type quietly) but shut the hell up and be quiet, nobody wants to hear you, or your gadgets. If you’re ill, stay at HOME we don’t want to hear you or get your germs.

I guess this is more about tolerance and perhaps I’m being intolerant here, but I think it doesn’t take a genius to work out if you are making repetitive noise over a long period of time you are basically irritating other people.