Broken Connexion

Flinders St station is bedecked with billboards saying something along the lines of:

‘We are making this station carbon neutral’.

Well, thank you for lighting the vending machines with fluorescent globes, Connex. I’m sure that’s a much better way of saving the planet than purchasing enough trains to prevent the disintegration of the Melbourne rail system. But that would be expensive and hard. I'm sorry for even mentioning such a proposal.

Never fear - these seemingly intractable problems are nothing that a pretty girl with a windmill won't fix!

The most annoying part of the ad is the woman on the poster, who looks like the type of person that would have confidently ticked ‘human rights lawyer’ on her year 7 vocational questionnaire. The courageous, defiant expression on her face evokes Abraham Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg address, rather than (as it should) a feckless shill for an incompetent transport company.

Her dignity is further undercut by the fact that she is holding a lightglobe in one hand and a small plastic windmill in the other. Now, pardon me for being skeptical, but I have seen few – in fact, no – wind turbines under construction on Flinders Street station’s roof. I can only assume, therefore, that the customer will have to bear the windmill cost.

CC, I hear you say, you’ve got it wrong. Connex is using that powerful image to illustrate their energy plan – to purchase more of their electricity from renewable sources. The girl holding the little windmill is only a powerful visual representation of this fact.

But this ad is not a representation of Connex’s new energy plan. It is their new energy plan.

*

SCENE: A young man of 29 walks up to the ticket counter in order to buy a train ticket.

YM: I’d like a weekly zone 1, please.

Ticket Guy: Certainly. That will be $34. And here is your small plastic windmill. That will be $150.

YM: $150 for a plastic windmill?

TG: It is a regulation Connex windmill.

YM: What is the difference between this windmill and, say, a regular plastic windmill that I might purchase at, say, a school fete?

TG: This one has been painted in Connex’s colours.

YM: That seems a bit steep.

TG: They are hand-painted by the girl in the ad. Her painting is so exquisite that she can only do 3 windmills an hour.

YM: Why are you selling me a plastic windmill with my ticket?

TG: It will help us to meet our greenhouse target.

YM: How does it work?

TG: When the train is in motion, we would greatly appreciate it if you could stick the windmill out of the window.

YM: Why?

TG: This will enable the small windmill to generate electricity.

YM: For what?

TG: Enough electricity… to power this light globe! (Ceremoniously holds out light globe and extension cord). The light globe is $45. The extension cord is free.

YM: Huh?

TG: Stick the windmill hand out of the window – right or left, it doesn’t matter – so that the lightglobe can function. The faster the train goes, the brighter the lightglobe gets.

YM: That’s a bit counterproductive, don’t you think?

TG: Whatever do you mean?

YM: Well, these windmills aren’t doing any good. They’re not powering the train, are they?

TG: Powering the train?

YM: Isn’t that the aim?

TG: The point, actually, is to offer a purely symbolic contribution to global warming in order to distract customers from our appalling level of service.

YM: That was a remarkably honest answer.

TG: I was fired this morning. This is my last day.