A Tesco bag at Monument…again

I was not particularly surprised to find Monument station closed last night at quarter past six in the evening with people pouring out like hungry rats looking for food, I mean what other time could be more convenient.

I was of course intrigued and in the interest of research I felt compelled to brave the emergency message being shouted out over the PA system and ask the poor soul guarding the gate of danger what the hell was going on. I no longer have great hope of extracting any useful information from any TFL member of staff, I ask more out of principle and to see what creative excuse they have come up with this time.

As you might have guessed from the title of this post the answer was “some suspect package or something”. As much as I appreciate TFL’s consideration for our safety I found the situation itslef a bit suspect to say the least. If there was a real danger to our lives and a package of some sort had been found, which content I have a feeling I might get censored for writing in the same sentence as the tube, would they not at least inform all members of staff so they as well could make sure they stay safe, in the end information saves lives! Secondly the evacuation was so extremely disorganised one would hope TFL knew better if they were actually trying to save my life. Now it could be possible, and not the least surprising, if this is how TFL deals with a real threat to our safety but I am for a moment going to give them the benefit of the doubt (I just had a piece of chocolate so I blame the rush of endorphins running through my body).

I' guessing they found something somewhere and instead of evaluating the situation and making a proper risk analysis they decided that even if it’s just a tesco bag with the remains of the plastic once containing someone’s lunch it is worth letting thousands of passengers try to cram into another station and cause massive disruption to the circle and district line in the middle of rush hour. AND we’re going to do it in the most incompetent way possible.

Surely if you wanted to bl*w a station into pieces you would chose the significantly larger Bank station a 100 meters down the road especially since due to escalator refurbishment work there is no interchange between Bank and Monument station.