The death of the formal train announcement is a tragedy

Yahoo

05-02-2025

One of the remnants of romance in rail travel can be heard at London terminuses during heavy rain. 'Due to the inclement weather,' begins the tannoy announcer in such wonderfully modulated, received pronunciation tones they suggest the lady (or gentleman) speaker may just have returned from having a cuppa in the refreshment room at Carnforth station occupied by a lovelorn Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard.
I adore that use of 'inclement', redolent as it is of a lost world where everyone dressed smartly, men wore hats and held the door for women and no one would have dreamt of putting their feet up on the seats. Encounters with such difficult or arcane words are sadly brief. Even inclement's gentle opposite is only heard nowadays when attached to the name Attlee. Blame the ubiquitous dreariness of dumbing down. You just know if it were up to the London Mayor, 'Sir' Sadiq Khan, the announcement of inclement weather would be scrapped and replaced with something more diverse: 'Hey, bruvs, watch yourselves, s'raining innit?'
Future historians may well date the beginning of the end of Great Britain to the introduction on the rail network of the ghastly announcement, 'See It. Say It. Sorted.' which has the demotic Cockney brutishness of Phil Mitchell in EastEnders. I don't know about you, but 'See It. Say It. Sorted.' always makes me want to launch a terrorist attack, not report one.
In the latest example of bowing down before the twin woke gods of Accessibility and Inclusivity, Network Rail has told staff not to call passengers 'passengers'. They are advised to use the word 'you' instead – a 'neutral term that avoids assumptions about gender', apparently, although that's rubbish because 'passenger' doesn't denote a sex – clearly something they want to avoid at all costs. Henceforth, pregnant women on trains – or should that be trans? – must be called 'pregnant people', while mother and father are replaced with 'parent' in any written or spoken communication. Mankind changes to the monstrosity, 'humankind'. And normal is now 'neurotypical'.
Perhaps Liam Halligan and I should switch the name of our podcast to Planet Neurotypical – doesn't have quite the same ring, does it?
Other words marked for the axe in Network Rail's new 134-page training manual – ironically entitled 'Speaking Passenger' – include 'purchase', 'obtain' and 'rest assured'. Using 'less formal language' turns out to be a 'bid to reduce customer frustration at train delays and cancellations'. A better way of doing that, of course, would be to make the railways run on time.
What the manual reveals is the patronising attitude of executives towards their customers – inferiors and morons who can't be expected to cope with hard words like 'purchase'. (Whatever happened to the public realm setting a standard people could aspire to?) It is also biased against the educated because anyone who speaks well or knows a few harder words is deeply suspect, probably patriotic (eeuw!) and almost certainly 'far-Right'.
On GB News on Sunday night, Michael Portillo recalled that a leaked 2023 Home Office report suggested that watching programmes like his much-loved BBC Two series Great British Railway Journeys could be a sign of far-Right activity. With its vast Islamic Network which aims to recruit Muslim staff and 'influence policymakers' to support 'Muslim needs', the Home Office is firmly established as a redoubt of anti-white, anti-British feeling.
For RICU (the Research, Information and Communication Unit tasked with spotting terrorist threats), the combination of a former Tory Cabinet minister presenter and a title with both Great and British in it must have excited more fear and loathing than an actual terrorist like Osama bin Laden. Truth is, the only atrocity threatened by Michael Portillo lies in his lurid combos of trousers and jackets.
Distinguished authors who were accused of posing a potential 'far-Right' threat in that Home Office report include Douglas Murray for his brilliant and prescient The Strange Death of Europe and Melanie Phillips whose new book, The Builder's Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West – And Why Only They Can Save It, I can highly recommend to you all. See how their respect for tradition and learning, even correct use of language, appear to minds warped by woke as a threat, not an asset.
What else do you imagine the Home Office and Network Rail would find too formal or suspiciously far-Right?
Good manners. Steam locomotives. Antiques Roadshow. Patriotism. Pensioners. Country churches. Wellington boots. Punctuation. British history before 1997. Thank-you letters. Garden centre cafés (a well-known hotbed of fascism), the Royal Air Force, a sense of fair play, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, Union Jacks, University Challenge (even worse if you can answer more than one question – that's elitist!); walking the dog, crafts (especially crochet), John Betjeman, jumble sales. Nostalgia. Labradors (of colour not black), saying you've read Shakespeare, G&T, hanging baskets (see also far-Right garden centres); Inspector Morse, thatched roofs, Just a Minute, paying for things in shops (I mean, honestly!), beach huts, crying at the end of The Great Escape, The Hay Wain, diction. Marmalade. Wiltshire, a full English (racist!).
Hang on, I expect some of you must have read that list and thought, blimey, didn't realise I was a Nazi sympathiser. It can happen to the best of us. All I hope is that the railway bods don't cancel 'inclement weather'.
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