London's Tube Announcer Fired

[jfrenaye]

This is just too good!

LONDON (Reuters) - An official announcer for London's Tube system has been sacked after making spoof messages mocking American tourists, peeping Toms and sweaty commuters.
Voiceover artist Emma Clarke, 36, recorded the announcements in the same smooth tones that have warned millions of passengers to "Mind The Gap" and posted them on her Web site.
The messages include:
* "We would like to remind our American tourist friends that you are almost certainly talking too loudly."
* "Would the passenger in the red shirt pretending to read the paper but who is actually staring at that woman's chest please stop. You are not fooling anyone, you filthy pervert."
* "Would passengers filling in answers on their Sudokus please accept that they are just crosswords for the unimaginative and are not in any way more impressive just because they contain numbers."
* "Here we are crammed again into a sweaty Tube carriage ... If you're female smile at the bloke next to you and make his day. He's probably not had sex for months."
Clarke said it was "just a bit of a laugh." But Tube operator Transport for London (TfL) failed to see the funny side and dropped her, after eight years.
"London Underground is sorry to have to announce that further contracts for Miss Clarke are experiencing severe delays," a TfL spokesman told the Evening Standard Monday.
All the recordings are at: www.emmaclarke.com/fun/mind-the-gap/spoof-london-underground-announcements.

[Ned]

Unfortunately the site with Emma's recordings is down due to bandwidth problems. They hope to get it up again by next week.

[jfrenaye]

I saw that but I know that voice and I am just picturing that soft, sexy British coo saying those....how funny!

[Kairho]

"Mind the Sack."

[Carchar]

OK. This was her own private website, as I understand it. Was her transgression so serious as to deserve being canned? I guess the Brits may only poke fun at their own companies in fiction.

[Kairho]

Delta similarly fired a stewardess a couple of years ago for comments on her private blog.

[jimtbay]

I am certainly no expert in web or labor law, but I tend to believe and live by the notion that the web is not private.

To me, there is no private blog or web site. The web is an open world. So the firings aside,...that is a different topic.... people should not expect anything posted online is private. Is email really private? People should not be shocked when someone calls them out on an item they have posted.

I am clear in my head, I think it is not translating into words.

[Ned]

I think you've made your point exceptionally well, and I for one, as an internet and computer networking professional, are in complete agreement.

People don't realize it, but somewhere in the world, there is still a copy of virtually every email ever sent, or at least the ones in the last 10 years. Eventually, the old ones will go away, but who knows when that will be. It's also possible to trace the origin of most emails, almost embarrassingly easily, if you know what you're doing.

If you want email to be actually private, you have to encrypt it (not that encryption can't be eventually broken, if desired) with a method such as public/private keys, as sold by companies such as PGP corporation.

Many corporations insist on encrypting all email between the corporation and their attorneys, for example. It makes perfect sense to me.

I am certainly no expert in web or labor law, but I tend to believe and live by the notion that the web is not private.

To me, there is no private blog or web site. The web is an open world. So the firings aside,...that is a different topic.... people should not expect anything posted online is private. Is email really private? People should not be shocked when someone calls them out on an item they have posted.

I am clear in my head, I think it is not translating into words.