Photo from the Guardian, from Saturday night’s Tube drinking spree. I suppose this is the Tube equivalent of stealing traffic cones:

I wonder what they’re saying to each other?

Woman on left: When Boris put up posters all over the tube announcing a drinking ban at midnight, but with weeks to go, it was like a red rag to a Blue Nun…

Woman on right: And oh, the irony of the Circle Line’s ‘vacuum flask’ look on the map… Good old Harry Beck! Here’s to topological design classics!

Boy In Middle: Actually, the ‘flask’ look wasn’t in Beck’s original 1933 design, it was a revision by a later designer, Paul Garbutt.

Woman on right: If you’re going to split hairs, I’ll glass your face.
***

Today’s Evening Standard front page headline: ‘TUBE DRINKING BINGE LEADER IS CITY BANKER’. The photo is of a dinner-jacketed man, looking like a Steve Bell cartoon of a stereotypical 1980s yuppie, standing in a Tube carriage, raising a glass of champagne to the camera.

The Standard reveals this apparent ringleader ‘did it because a female friend who worked for Ken Livingstone lost her job following Boris Johnson’s election victory.’

It’s impossible that any single person was behind all of the revelry, of course, given it was a more a whispered ‘pass it on’ wheeze rather than anything else. But that’s the thing about chaos: you can take from it what you want. Including a causal argument that completely demolishes the point any protesters were trying to make about responsible drinking. Says the editorial:

‘The Mayor’s prompt delivery on his Tube ban is welcome… Alcohol bans on public transport are an inevitable result of the inability of some drinkers, like those on Saturday, to drink responsibly.’

But the Saturday night train-based boozing wouldn’t have happened if the ban hadn’t been trumpeted in the first place. Why didn’t Boris just quietly bring the ban into action with immediate effect? Why not at, say, 11am on a Tuesday morning rather than midnight on a Saturday?

Well, to remove freedom from people, it helps to encourage people to act as if they need to have their freedom removed. Clever stuff. So Boris is made to look smarter than ever, while Londoners – and as the Standard insists, Livingstone voters – are painted as naughty, stupid children that need to have their privileges taken away.

A paradox of causality: a protest used to justify the thing it’s protesting against.

But this is all part of a much longer trend in treating people en masse like naughty children. From the Quiet Carriage signs that seem to invite bad behaviour rather than prevent it, to a set of other Tube posters – brought in under Ken – which depict a series of cartoon baby-like figures promising ‘I won’t have my music on too loud’, ‘I’ll offer you my seat’ ‘And I’ll say thank you’.

The only response allowed – and encouraged – seems to be one of Pavlovian reaction. A drinking ban on the Tube provokes… irresponsible drinking on the Tube. Unhappiness with Labour equals Conservative landslides. To exercise free will, people are currently meant to react only in terms that consolidate whatever it is they’re reacting against. Whether it’s knee-jerk Conservatives or knee-jerk Anti-Conservatives (and knee-jerk liberals), as long as the knee is jerking to a worse option – for the sake of option at all – it can’t be good.

From all accounts, I understand there were plenty of mini-parties taking place on the Tube of perfectly harmless, responsible, light-hearted and fluffy-tailed (and in the case of Boris-dressed groups, fluffy-wigged) young people enjoying themselves, and having fun without others suffering; special hats off to young Ally Moss and her portable brush and dustpan alongside her evening dress. But – sigh – the majority of coverage goes to the archetypal loutish lads and ladettes. The meek shall never inherit the headlines.

Admittedly, my whole philosophy is to be wary of crowds, fashions, crazes and trends, and resist the herd instinct, however well-meaning it might appear. There is danger in numbers. And not much opportunity for individual style, either.

Well, unless it suits me, of course. If the Facebook-based Flash Mob is now the only true way to make hordes of young people act en masse, I wonder if I should start a group there called ‘Sock It To Boris and Feel Part Of Something – Buy The New Fosca Album!’