What the hell are you doing in London then, Gary?

Hi! Remember not so long ago, I found a racist Singaporean student at Exeter University? Now I have found another right here in London - his name is Gary Tay and he really seems to hate London. Allow me to cut and paste what he wrote on TOC's Facebook page (on a piece comparing the London Underground system with Singapore's MRT): 

Gary Tay Living in london for 2 years now and using the tube for work, the number of times it broke down in unspeakable. Today total tube down due to 24hr strike, unions here just don't give a f' about commuters. Sections of the tube can be down for months at a time (trains just pass them). Also it costs SGD$10 ~$30/day and about S$10/trip if you don't use their day card. (Seriously not worth what you pay for) During rush hour the tube stations closes entrances and herd people (from one entrance) to the ticketing booth, a queue that goes 10-15mins. Nobody gives up their seat. Rubbish everywhere. Also, suicide, stabbings and crazy stuff happen at such a regular basis it's not even news anymore.  At one point i even saw a guy pee onto the seat and walked away.... nothing to say... Weirdly it seem to break down every other day in London too. Guess it's just perspective. I'm not defending SMRT, but we should not be comparing to London, try Taipei or MTR, which does have a rather impressive system similar to SG. without the huge CEO pay...

So, please allow me to deal with his points to see if the liar Gary Tay has been lying or exaggerating.

London Underground trains, aka 'the tube'

Breakdowns do happen once in a while, that is inevitable with a system that has 270 stations, over 400 km of track and is 152 years old. The system is used by about 3 million commuters a day (with the figure reaching an all time record of 4.4 million during the 2012 Olympics). Now Gary seems to think that he is the only one affected when trains break down - I have news for you, it's not just you Gary, when any one line is disrupted, the journeys of thousands, even millions of commuters are affected and delayed. If the system was really as bad as Gary makes it out to be - "unspeakable" or "break down every other day" - then the sensible thing for millions of commuters would be to turn to alternatives: using buses, working from home, moving into town so they can walk to work, cycling, buying a car etc. But the fact that over 3 million people continue to depend on the system daily tells you that whilst the system isn't great, it is still fit for purpose and certainly not "unspeakable". 

Sections of the tube network can be down for a while if stations are in need of upgrading work - take my local station Tottenham Court Road for example which is undergoing a major redevelopment at the moment. Tottenham Court Road station was first built way back in 1900 - I would like you to cast your minds back over 100 years and think about the design of the original station when it was first built then. In order for it to be incorporated into the latest Crossrail network, needless to say, this underground station has to undergo major redevelopment work. As a result, central train trains did not stop at Tottenham Court Road station whilst the station was rebuilt to integrate the exist tube system to this new Crossrail project. It is not a matter of building a few new escalators and lifts, but in fact one of the most major transport infrastructure projects in London, turning Tottenham Court Road into a major central London interchange station with direct links to commuter towns far and beyond London. So Gary, let's put things in perspective here. Would you rather the London transport system remain as it was designed back in 1900, with no upgrades, no modernization, no new lines and no improvements? Get real here. In any case, if I can't get off at Tottenham Court Road on the central line, I'd just get off one station before or after, with both stations being a very short walk away.

Upgrading works will result in some delays

The cost of your journey on the London underground network will vary with the distance you travel. Gary claims: Also it costs SGD$10 ~$30/day and about S$10/trip if you don't use their day card. (Seriously not worth what you pay for) Now that's blatantly a lie. Gary, I know the London tube system is more expensive than Singapore's MRT, but why do you have to resort to telling blatant lies like that to make a point? Now the prices I am quoting you are taking from the Transport For London website here, let's look at the adult prices for the London tube network, bearing in mind the current exchange rate is about £1 to S$2.08.With my Oyster Card (the equivalent of SMRT's EZ Link card), a single journey within zone 1 costs £2.30, so if you're taking two journeys a day (to and from work within central London), that would cost £4.60 or S$9.56 - but this is when it gets a bit more fuzzy. The prices for off-peak travel drops dramatically to discourage people from traveling during peak hours and so for example, you can get from zone 6 into zone 2 for just £1.50 during off peak. As you can see, it's really not that expensive. Besides, not everyone works in zone 1 and has to commute into or via zone 1 so Gary's calculations are based on someone who is living really very far away and insisting on traveling into and out of central London during peak hours. Perhaps that is indeed his situation, but he shouldn't assume that all other Londoners have that same arrangement when it comes to their commuting patterns.

Furthermore, there is the daily price cap with our Oyster Card system: it is a really convenient money saver. It means that once you have hit your daily price cap on your Oyster Card, no more money will be deducted from your card as long as you stay within the zones you have already traveled in. This is automatically calculated on the system and the prices are very reasonable: so the off-peak price cap for Oyster Card users in zone 1 central London is just £6.40 - so I don't know where the hell Gary has picked the figure of S$10/trip from. Perhaps if you were going a very long distance, from zone 1 to 6 during peak hour, then the cost of your journey can exceed £5 or S$10 - but bear in mind that's a really long, epic journey that most London commuters do not take. There is a comprehensive (if not complicated) price list on the TFL website that will guide you to the right ticket to buy and if you require a season ticket, then make sure you study it carefully to get the cheapest ticket. It seems that Gary is either deliberately trying to mislead you Singaporeans with his blatant lies or he needs Limpeh's guide to London's public transport system. 

Gary also claims, "During rush hour the tube stations closes entrances and herd people (from one entrance) to the ticketing booth, a queue that goes 10-15mins." Duh Gary, as if MRT stations don't get crowded during rush hours? Look, tube stations will close some entrances temporarily to regulate the flow of human traffic between the entrance and the train platforms - it is a sensible health & safety precaution to take to prevent overcrowding at platform level if say, there are delays on the network. It is always safer to keep people waiting outside the station (where they can contemplate alternative routes home, by taking the bus or a different train) than to simply let even more people into the station when you already know that there is major overcrowding at the platforms. This is the kind of health & safety precaution that would also be taken in Singapore, should there be a similar situation of platform overcrowding. 

What Gary also neglects to mention is that most commuters never ever go to a ticketing booth: instead, we use a machine where we can do all of the transactions we require. That is exactly the same situation with MRT stations in Singapore - most commuters simply use the ticket machines. It seems the only people who go to a ticket booth are dumb tourists who simply do not trust themselves to use one of those ticket machines or the elderly who are afraid of technology. So if you really want to buy a ticket from a human being, you can - but what tends to happen is that staff are deployed to stand around the ticket machines so they can assist customers if they are not quite sure how to use the machines to purchase the ticket they need. This is far more efficient than opening up more ticket booths when there are already so many ticket machines. In fact, we can even use our British bank cards (debit/credit cards) with contactless technology to conveniently swipe in and out of tube stations, so we do not even need to buy a ticket.

Over 3 million people the tube in London everyday

Gary goes on to claim, " Nobody gives up their seat. Rubbish everywhere.Also, suicide, stabbings and crazy stuff happen at such a regular basis it's not even news anymore" Well Gary, I have news for you. That's the same situation in Singapore - my elderly parents have to stand on the MRT as none of the Singaporeans will offer them a seat. That's the situation in Singapore these days - commuters have their noses buried in their smartphones and they don't even look up to see the frail little old lady struggling to stand. Rubbish everywhere? Whilst we don't have draconian laws to deal with litterbugs in the UK, the situation really isn't that bad and no, I don't think the trains are overflowing with litter. Singaporean trains are somewhat cleaner, but this is when you fall into the Singaporean trap whereby you convince yourself that you must allow the PAP to control every single aspect of your life; that without draconian laws to punish even the most petty crimes, civilization as we know it will someone fall apart and society will cease to function. Erm no, it doesn't work like that - I won't die of some kinda nasty Ebola style virus if I come across a piece of litter on my journey, it's really not such a big deal. I won't let the sight of some litter ruin my day.

As for suicides, that's a very tragic issue we're talking about here. It is about someone who is taking his/her own life in public, probably in a last ditch attempt to cry for help and draw attention to the situation s/he is in. Yet Gary dismisses it has 'crazy stuff' that is not even news anymore - what kind of cold hearted bastard is he? Should Gary ever be driven to suicide one day, how would he feel if we all just rolled our eyes and dismissed it as 'crazy stuff' that is not even news? And as for stabbings, that's serious shit, that's somebody being seriously injured in an attack - again, no compassion from Gary? Is that all just 'crazy stuff' in his eyes? And just to prove to you that it's Gary Tay who's so cold hearted (and not British society). There was a double suicide on London's Ealing Broadway station recently here's a list of the many articles in British news media to prove to you that we do care about suicides and that only a cold hearted fucker like Gary Tay would dismiss this as "crazy shit". No, that just makes Gary a great big fat fucking liar.

Mother and daughter double suicide: June 2015: London Metro
Earling Broadway deaths were mother and daugher: Huffington Post UK
Mother was 36, daughter was 16: Daily Mail UK
Double fatality at Ealing Broadway: The Guardian
Woman and daughter killed by train: The Independent
Mother and daughter hit by train: The Telegraph

Well fuck you Gary, just because you dismiss tragic suicides like that as "crazy stuff" doesn't mean the rest of us in the UK are that cold hearted as to not even talk about it in the news: when a mother and a daughter kill themselves by jumping in front of a train it is news you fucking Singaporean fucktard. If you hate the UK so much, then kindly fuck off back to Singapore and be with your beloved Singaporeans - just don't tell such fucking blatant racist lies about British you fucking stupid piece of little Singaporean shit. Oh and its gets better. Gary said, "At one point i even saw a guy pee onto the seat and walked away.... nothing to say..." Well guess what Gary? You missed the story of the woman who took a shit in an MRT station in full view of the public. You only encountered a man having a pee but the Singaporeans beat that by taking a shit (and pee, presumably, you tend to pee as well when you shit) in public. Check this article out! Yup there's even a picture of that woman's bum and the shit on the floor. I guess that happened whilst you were in London Gary, you better keep in touch with the news from back home. You really need to read Limpeh's blog more often then, Gary!

Oh expect to see a lot more signs like this in Singapore!

As for the 24 hour strike today, yes the unions don't give a fuck about commuters and that is a problem of the system but strikes don't happen often. When strikes do happen, employers are usually very flexible with their workers - often allowing them to either stagger their working hours to fit around their journey or simply allowing them to work from home. I know that Singaporeans have this stupid habit of freaking out the moment they hear the word 'strike' but really, calm down folks - it's not such a big deal. It's not like there are riots in the streets and there's mayhem and chaos everywhere hardly. It just means that some people have to take the bus instead of the tube to work and as a result, their journey may take a bit longer. Duh. That's all. It's not such a fucking big deal so calm the fuck down. Am I trying to defend the London underground system? No, I don't use it much because I prefer cycling as a means to commuting - it is faster and cheaper, as long as the weather is okay, it is a pretty nice way to get around town. It is not great, then again, it isn't the complete train wreck of a disaster that Gary is say it is. IMHO, it is okay, it is kinda expensive but it works well enough for millions of Londoners to depend on it daily to get around. Sure improvements can be made, but can you find me a metro-train system around the world that is perfect and doesn't need improvements? At least the men on the London tube at good looking - I just can't imagine there ever being a Singaporean version of tube crush. No, there's definitely more eye candy in London!

But my final point is simple: if Gary hates London so fucking much then he would go on Facebook to kao-beh-kao-bu to other Singaporeans about London and Londoners, then I have a simple solution: FUCK OFF back to Singapore. Go on, you know your way to Singapore. What the fuck are you doing here in London if you're so fucking miserable? If London is such a fucking miserable place, then you must be a total fucking retard in staying here when you can easily return to your beloved Singapore any time you want. Don't stay here and then complain to Singaporeans on social media about how much better Singapore is - just go back to Singapore already and if you want to make comparison, fine but don't fucking lie. Don't be a fucking liar and spread lies on social media like the two faced dog you are. Buay song? Then feel free to leave a comment for Limpeh below, let me know your thoughts. Many thanks for reading.