Neil Williams wrote:
On Thu, 12 Jul 2007 23:27:44 GMT, Chris Tolley
wrote:
Ah, so you had not followed the instructions. Good job it wasn't a fire.
I felt that joining the masses in the concourse could have put me in
danger or at the very least more discomfort than remaining on the
platform. I was not the only one taking that view.
No doubt. But that does not necessarily make it the cleverest thing to
do. For every circumstance in which you might foresee a more comfortable
and safer existence on the platform, there is probably a converse.
(Oh yes, I know, get someone to count them! But presumably they would
reason that once things start to move they wouldn't want to be
wasting time doing things like that when there is a much more simple
way of determining the answer , as in removing everyone from the
train and telling them to vacate the platform.)
Easier? Yes. Safer and more effective? No.
Why are you convinced it was safer? You have only mentioned "the high
risk of a bomb attack at present", and when all is said and done, you
were talking about London, rather than Baghdad. The risk from a bomb is
surely infinitesimal in any normal sense of perspective. OTOH, there is
a much higher risk of being knifed in London, and I would have thought
that particular risk reduced in crowds.
There are, of course, times when it is probably in one's interest to go
against the flow, but I am not convinced this was one of them. When some
contingency of this kind arises, it is almost certainly a safer
assumption these days that there has been some relevant contingency
planning done in advance than that there hasn't. And therefore,
counter-intuitive though it must seem at times from the perspective of
one of the milling hordes, it is more likely that it will be safer to do
as one is bidden than not.
It seemed like a manifestation of the typical South East "keep them on
the concourse and tell them at the last minute" nonsense.
I guess I don't like that any more than you do, and sadly it isn't a
South-East thing exclusively - indeed, didn't the SE get the idea from
Blackpool ? ;-)
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