"Londoners not helpful" shock

Despite my rather sardonic headline, I actually am shocked by this report. I was shocked enough when I first heard the story of how a man was stabbed to death on the bus, simply for attempting to stop another passenger throwing chips at his girlfriend - I admit, the take-home message for me was, tell Beloved not to interfere in strangers' bad behaviour*.

But that was one, crazy guy doing one, crazy thing. To read that the whole bus full of non-crazy passengers simply stood by - let the man die, declined to get involved in basic first aid - that shocks me deeply.

The question of what I would have done is, obviously, unanswerable. I also know that this is not necessarily the standard response. My friend Pip was once in a tube carriage when an old man appeared to die, right in front of her, and the other passengers leapt into action. But maybe that was less threatening. Less bloody. Less close to the bone when the city is after all feeling rather vulnerable.

Anyway it sucks.

I didn't say I had any profound insights to offer.

_____
* There is a lot of appalling behaviour on London public transport, most of it from schoolchildren. It's almost incomprehensible to many South Africans - used, as we are, to a far more oldfashioned approach to discipline - how little authority figures step in to control misbehaviour (usually because they are not allowed). As an example, Beloved was once on a bus where two groups of kids got into a fight. The driver stopped the bus; the conductor and all non-combatant passengers got off and simply waited for them to get over it.