Customer swear
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us passengers in Leeds were no doubt delighted when the city's bus station saw fit to invest in an electronic talking bus stop which supplies timetable information at the push of a button.
However, delight soon turned to horror when routine inquiries of the robostop released a string of foul language in basic Anglo-Saxon. Surely the stop hadn't been programmed to act like a real bus station employee?
It seems a mischievous computer buff had "hacked" into the battery-operated box and replaced details of bus services to Heckmondwike, Shelf or Birstall with far riper travel instructions. Metro, the West Yorkshire passenger authority, insists the swearing has been shown the blue pencil, but its troubles haven't ended there.
The real announcements, recorded by local radio presenter Rowan Morton-Gledhill, have drawn flack for being too polite. Ms Morton-Gledhill, though born locally in Holrnfirth, has been accused of speaking in a plummy accent, thus raising the tone of the area. She has been replaced by a new announcer, psychology graduate Helen Schofield, who speaks with a mild Yorkshire accent. I hope, in the middle of all this, somebody has bothered to spare a thought for the poor bus stop — it must be r awfully confused by now