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London Underground Adverts in Buy Nothing Day action

Hi Jack | 26.11.2007 20:59 | Culture | Globalisation | London

It seems that Transport For London have bowed to activist pressure and decided to remove all the adverts from the district line.

The TFL team in action
The TFL team in action

An advert free carriage
An advert free carriage

The TFL stickers
The TFL stickers


I never would have thought that TFL would have taken part in buy nothing day, but it seems even Red Ken wanted to join in the fun.

A group of Space Hijacker agents were travelling across London when we spotted a TFL decoration team, swiftly turning all of the adverts on the District Line around so that their blank sides were facing out.

They then posted up official LondON stickers proclaiming:

"As part of TFL's £10 Billion investment program, London Underground are removing all adverts from trains to improve the ambience of carriages and the overall travelling experience of passengers."

We can only applaud this bold move against the constant corporate assault on our senses.

The team we saw doing it were very quick, managing to swap around entire carriages of adverts in less than the time it took the train to travel one stop. Infact so impressed were our agents that we kept an eye on the trains and spotted the advert free carriages several days after.

On the trains we overheard one of the passengers asking "but what are we going to read?", the TFL spokesperson replied "You could try talking to each other?"

Three cheers for TFL ;-)

Hi Jack
- Homepage: http://www.spacehijackers.org

Additions

I like this

27.11.2007 01:13

I saw the advert-empty carriages today on my way to work and it was wonderful! People were talking about it to each other, and it was a good jolt, and a refresh for the brain to have blank spaces instead of people selling me things.

Lisa


Comments

Hide the following 3 comments

Saw it this morning

27.11.2007 09:39

I saw it this morning travelling into work.

productive comment there snore boy?

I liked it.

Ken


A comment

27.11.2007 16:27

Transport for London probably don't have a US spelling checker installed on their computers and so are able to spell programme correctly.

Other than that, an excellent action.

Me


Continuing improvements

02.12.2007 13:23

Just to let you know, following the postive reception of improvements on the district line, it looked to me, coming home on monday night, as though TfL had begun to implement similar changes on the central line. I hope it continues!

Sian
mail e-mail: slhaestier@gmail.com