Anouncements on the tube about the East London Line

I don't really like tube announcements at the best of times. Being told to mind the gap, stand behind the yellow line, mind the stairs because it has been raining and they might be slippery and generally being told to do things that anyone with the capability to reason that being hit by a train would be a bad thing would do automatically, just generally pisses me off. In order to cater to the retarded nought point five percent of the population who have not been able to deduce that putting your foot in the gap between the train and the platform could result in something bad happening, the people who run the tube have decided to bombard me with a constant stream of noise and it frankly makes me want to purposefully jump in front of a train or at the very least pull a Van Gough.

Thankfully (or maybe unfortunately to my many nemeses) I have so far been able to resist these urges. This time though they are really pushing me to my limits. Fair enough the East London Line is closed: until 2010. I understand that. Maybe they should initially put some announcements out. And put up some posters. That is fine. What I don't really think is necessary, in fact what I am coming to believe is a soul crushing plan engineered by an arch rival, is the need to include this information in every single fucking service update, every ten or fifteen minutes, every day for two fucking years. Seriously. Two Years. Why? Who the hell doesn't already know that the line is closed. Do they really think that there are a plethora of commuters every day who have forgotten that the tube line they take home every day is closed that are saved by a timely announcement? This announcement is going out so often that I decided to calculate how often it would be made before the line re-opened. This is what I found:

Average announcements per hour (4) x Amount of tube stations (275) x average open hours per day (16) x days in a year (365) x years before opening (2) = 12, 848, 000

Twelve million eight hundred and fourty eight times those bastard words wil be uttered. Assuming that this takes 4 seconds per announcement that means over one and a half years of public service messages about it. ONE AND A HALF YEARS OF TALKING ABOUT SOMETHING THAT IS ONLY GOING TO TAKE TWO YEARS TO HAPPEN. Yeah so maybe I have too much time on my hands figuring this out but Tfl you can go fuck yourselves because you are spending one and a half years telling people about a tube line that only ever had 10 stations and is being extended to Croydon. Presumably so that more people can go to the Walkabout and experience the intoxicating mix of angry chavs, cheap booze, cheesy music, bad shirts and too much Brylcream that exists in there. (it's better than it sounds)

Personally I will probably hear it four thousand, three hundred and eighty times. FOUR THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY TIMES. I GOT THE MESSAGE AFTER THE FIRST ONE.

Some people have told me that it is helpful for tourists. Excuse me but how many tourists are getting the East London Line? It goes from Shoreditch to New Cross for fucks sake. It has got to be the least friendly line to tourists on the whole tube. Show me the tourist that is going to visit picturesque Wapping followed by a a luxurious meal in the Hobgoblin in New Cross and I will show you an idiot. Equally there are signs about it on any tube map you care to look at. Might I suggest that someone who cannot read English is also likely not to be able to understand English and therefore just be confused and probably angered by the unintelligible drone of noise that plagues them whenever they get a train in London. Much like I am. Please God, or maybe just Tfl, end this madness, it might just stop me crying every time I pay twenty four pounds twenty for a travelcard.