Monday, May 18, 2009

Escalating Control   [Mark Steyn]

From the Globe & Mail:

MONTREAL — Anyone who has ridden an escalator and bothered to pay attention has seen – and likely ignored – little signs suggesting riders hold the grimy handrail.

In Montreal's subway system, the friendly advice seems to have taken on the force of law, backed by a $100 fine.

Bela Kosoian, a 38-year-old mother of two, says when she didn't hold the handrail Wednesday she was cuffed, dragged into a small holding cell and fined.

“It was horrible, disgusting behaviour [by police],” said Ms. Kosoian, a 38-year-old student of international law. “I did nothing wrong. They should go find the guys who stole my tires off the balcony.”

Pausing only to wonder idly whether the expressions "38-year-old student of international law" and "the guys who stole my tires off the balcony" have ever been used in the same paragraph in the entire history of the English language, we read on to find experts dismissing the plea in mitigation by Ms. Kosoian (an immigrant from the former Soviet republic of Georgia) that she "feared catching a new bug":

A leading germ expert says you are more likely to fall down an escalator than catch illness from a handrail.

All the more reason to criminalize hands-free riding then. Meanwhile in Britain:

Learning how to fasten a tie had always been a schoolboy's rite of passage.

But then the health and safety police got involved.

Concerns over accidental strangling, playground games in which pupils yank each others' ties and fears that ties might catch fire in science lessons have seen the classroom institution fall victim to its clip-on cousin.

And what if your tie gets caught in the handrail of an escalator?

05/18 07:54 AMShare