Don't Read This Article

Fucking hell.

The one time I was on a bus with a proper FITE going on, people pushing and shoving and shouting, mainly. The bus driver stopped the bus and got the police. And not one of the passengers said a word because the bloke who started it was still on the bus. I was about to speak up, but my boyfriend of the time just kind of said "don't get involved". I was trying to gesture with my head towards the bloke but the police either didn't see or didn't understand.

It's scary because it's so random, and yet so utterly totally plausible in a "that could happen any time" sort of way.

Breaking up fights is a different matter. I was once told "mind your own fucking business" by a girl who was being beaten senseless by her boyfriend when I tried to intervene. That they both directed their abuse at me, albeit momentarily, probably brought them a little bit closer together. It's nice to bring happiness to other people's lives :-)

Shock, perhaps.

I don't know; then again, how many people just kind of go into a sort of ... trance when they're on a bus, with books and headphones, deliberately trying to ignore what is going on outside. I know I do.

(A few weeks ago, I was on a bus that got in a road accident. We all heard and felt the bump, but it was a good ten minutes of not moving before anyone actually got up and went downstairs to see what was going on, or, indeed, move to get off the bus.)

I dunno, it's one thing to make moral pronouncements, but it's another thing to think "would *would* you do in that situation? Have you been in a similar situation? How did you react?"

Is that cause random psychopaths are just par for the course in London?

xpost -- i don't feel spiteful towards the passengers, i could have been one and i would have been the same (well, maybe). obviously the killer is -- i actually don;t have any words for it.

Seems to me that disappointment, rather than spite, was what came across in that article apropos other passengers.

Maybe they're scared to say anything about the random psychopath because he was black? Or are we just to continue not going there, ignore the elephant in the room, etc., for fear of being howled down as BNP activists?

Archel, I'm not sure if the cons ever ultimately outweight the pros of city life (or vice versa).

x-post

I think you are just as likely - possibly more likely - to see drunken violence in a small town, or even a village, on a Saturday night.

I find it astonishing that no one else approached an injured man in this situation

taking this as the writer's key argument, not the fact nobody got involved with the fight: i would certainly be terrified to approach an injured man in this situation, principally because my knowledge of first-aid is next to zero and i'd be scared of making the situation worse. i keep thinking i should do some kind of first-aid course: this article has at least given me some more impetus.

i'm not saying that's an excuse everyone on the bus could use, but genuinely: if someone was bleeding to death in front of me, the best i'd be able to do is shout a lot and look for someone else, because i would not have a fucking clue what to do. try to staunch the wound? move him? not move him? seriously: i'd panic. and that would be bad.

the ethics of getting involved in a fight etc are a separate issue completely. but, as is made clear here: by the time anyone really knows what's going on, it can be too late. i mean: you hear shouts on a bus or in the street, you assume it's nothing serious. it happens all the time. the tipping point - the stab, the kick, whatever - happens quickly and instantly. short of getting involved in every single incident you see, what can you do?

(so many xposts)

Everyone's too cramped in - look at the streets of houses huddled up together - there's no space, not enough deliverance or happiness, frankly too many people, and therefore you get tension.

The temptation to leave London - and indeed Britain - grows stronger by the day. I would find it nice just to be able to walk down a street without being confronted by some idiot trying it, to not be awakened at two in the morning by screaming kids and/or thumping R&B, to live somewhere where people still treat each other with consideration and respect. Are there any such places left on this planet, and if so what's the quickest route there?

No, I think the sad problem is that common sense and decency are directly at odds in situations like this.

this is so, you are referring to the phenomenon of 'diffused responsibility'. the study was stimulated many years ago by the rape and murder of a woman in the courtyard of an apartment building in New York i think

what would you have them do though? it only takes one or two people to help, and as strange as it sounds i think people deem it colder to just walk away once even when they know someone is helping.

again, they're afraid of messing up/making it worse if they get involved, esp. if they're not trained, so what would you have them do?

yes, but like i said above: they'd have to have taken action immediately, ie as soon as the nutter threw his first chip. come on, we've all seen how quickly these things escalate. by the time it's obvious that something's wrong, someone's already been hurt.

for five people to have stopped this murder, they'd either have had to be able to stop time - or leap on the guy and batter him for the mere act of throwing a chip. personally, i'm kinda in favour of such draconian discipline, but that's because i'm getting old and am turning into my dad.

everyone probably assumes someone already did, or, if they're not sure what the problem is, worry about wasting emergency services time! i mean if someone just collapses it could be a mere faint due to heat and you wouldn't want to dial 999 for that.

...being taken to the police station for questioning which is just what you want on a friday night after a hard week's work, being summoned to appear in court as a witness, being put in hospital by the defendant's mates afterwards...

gf, someone did take action immediately, i.e. as soon as the first nutter threw his first chip. He was stabbed to death by said nutter in front of his girlfriend. This is why people don't take action immediately. See?

marcello -- yeah, that's true as well. i think i'm going to move to the shetlands.

1. Large man strangling small woman in the middle of the day in a busy street. Outcome: the guy (literally foaming at the mouth) tells me to keep the woman away from him or he will kill her, the woman tells me to fuck off.

2. Geezer annoying three girls at a bus stop, suddenly grabs one of the girls by the neck (a pattern is emerging here). Outcome: I'm pulled off the guy by various people, and a down-and-out guy takes me to one side for my own safety ... then asks me for some spare change! The three girls are long gone by now.

3. Slightly drunk old man randomly clattered VERY violently on the side of the head by one of three VERY stoned 15 years olds. Outcome: lots of "Do you want some mate?" argy-bargying, defused by me having a *Glasgow accent.

And I've only been here five years. Don't remember ever getting involved in similar incidents in Scotland. Maybe I'm braver here! *The accent is usefully even if you've got a poofy sorta voice like me!

while don't disagree with you, i also think the very wealth of psych study on the topic is indicative that a lot of people recognise that it is in fact a phenomenon that could occur anywhere, i.e. that it is a psychological phenomenon rather than an example of the callousness of people in any particular location or situation

That's a good point. I've noticed that troublemakers on buses tend to amend their behaviour pattern pretty rapidly when the bus driver is black and gives as good as they get. If they sense that the driver is vulnerable in any way then they think they can get away with anything, and they usually do.

this is utter bollocks! if it was a white bloke with a knife coming down the 43 bus the same thing would happen - people think "omg wtf he has a knife". i mean you have to really be a proper daily mail reader to think that race has anything to do with anything here.

(note to future prosecutors: the above is a THEORETICAL premise ONLY and DOES NOT MEAN I plan to come down the 43 bus with a knife at any point in my existence)

Last Saturday teatime I was bussing it from Streatham into the City. Before I'd even got to Brixton I'd already had to change buses four times because of nincompoop/threatening/lairy/mentalist behaviour by other passengers. I ended up at Elephant and Castle getting on the same 45 bus I'd abandoned half an hour earlier. The driver said: "Don't worry, they've all gone now!" Made me wish I was rich enough to live in Clerkenwell or somewhere instead of crappy south London... :-(

Every time I've been on a bus going to or from Streatham and there's been an incident, it always ends up with the perpetrator howling in patois that no one's showing him/her any Respect, as if your skin colour were a free pass for you to act like a cunt.

some white dude called me a "fucking chink" once a few months ago, my flatmate took issues with it and then the dude said to my flatmate why he wasn't showing him any respect. so i don't think "respect" is something that is only claimed to be not paid to black guys who do bad things. it's just a thing that young people say.

[boggles]

It is hard to stomach the lack of response from the passengers when the attacker had left, but is it possible none of them knew what to do? Like Steve said upthread, if you don't know first-aid (or whatever), and somebody has taken control, what can you do except stand around and gawk?

Assuming somebody does take charge of the situation, that is.

i wonder if any of the people were afraid to move the victim's legs or whatever for fear of litigation? or is that just the law student in me?

especially strange when there was apparently one girl on the phone to emergency services said "put his foot down" when this "only other girl who helped" was grabbing his foot. i don't know whether this was like a direction from the 999 or not.

well, i'm pretty sure *most* of 'em spoke english. that's my experience of the 43, anyway, as it whisks me from upper street to highgate...

hah! xpost -- yeah, holloway road is lairy, but it's not fucking basra, you know. lairiness is a pain.

That reminds me, getting the 43 home on July 8th. The (Asian) bus driver stopped the bus and said there had just been a bomb on a bus at Angel and to check for suspicious packages; the Polish girl in front of me turned round and asked me if a bomb had really gone off as she hadn't heard anything; me and the African guy I was sitting beside simultaneously looked under our seat and both laughed when we realised there was no room to put anything under the seats at the back of a London bus, let alone a bomb; meanwhile the Japanese girl on the opposite side of me sta thru the whole thing reading a comic book.

(haha actually Dave I did make a grab for the shoplifting behemoth kid - from behind, grabbed shirt collar and twisted to restrict flow to his airpipe, yanking right down. There wasn't much he could do to put his hands on me from that angle before I went Tourette's with the insults)

i hope you top this with 'girlfriend'.

Foolish cretins.

i was somewhat disappointed by the lack of response on a saturday afternoon on a busy interstate, but was absolutely INFURIATED by the drivers who wouldn't let us cross back over the road to our cars, and insisted on blowing through the site of a very evidently serious accident at 40 mph! minnesota nice my ass.

also in:re the heroic truck drivers, it must be said, if you have no idea what the appropriate course of action is in these types of events (even if it's pretty goddamn obvious to most of us) just stay far, far away. she did in fact have a neck injury and cranking her out of the car would likely have made things disastrously worse.

this is OTM and a very important point.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060507/bus_beating060507/20060507?hub=Canada

Man dies after gang beating on Edmonton bus:

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/03/03/edmonton-bus-death060303.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/minette_marrin/article6926950.ece

matthew freeman wrote:
anyone with chavy instincts should be banned from parenting
November 22, 2009 12:14 PM GMT on community.timesonline.co.uk
Recommend? (27)

I skimmed over it & kept reading "LDs" as "LDS" or "Latter Day Saint" (= Mormon) and it stopped me from killing people.

in an ideal world everyone with LDs would have enough good and wise care workers to help them through all their choices in life

I like the idea of specifically Mormon case workers for Mormons to call when they're tempted to try coffee or something.

jesus christ some of the things upthread

xp - Abbott - I did the same thing!