Trivial Things that annoy you - Mod Note in OP

I'm going to a gig in Dublin this evening so decided to go by train. I was looking forward to a nice, quiet afternoon train journey but forgot all about the Ireland rugby match. The train is jammed, and the noise of them!!

Button batteries.

Every single "musical book" that my 2 year old has requires a different type of button battery. Seemingly, you can only buy them in packs of 20. The entire planet has settled on AA or AAA for the bigger small electronic items. Even the different USB standards are tolerable for phones etc. But fecking musical books for babies feels like a shakedown on a par with traffic stops in 3rd world countries.

People in Lidl packing their huge trolleys of groceries at the checkout, rather than at the ledge. It slows everyone up.

Suicide is certainly not trivial and I agree it's a huge issue with the added element of stigma and the reluctance of many people to discuss it openly. The families of suicide victims must feel somewhat abandoned and their situation ignored to a degree, not because people are uncaring, but they often feel helpless and ill-equipped to reach out to them.

Road traffic accidents though, are totally different because the victims never set out to end their lives or those of others. People will always act irresponsibly by driving too fast, under the influence of drink/drugs or using phones while driving etc.

It's a matter of trying to educate drivers to embrace safely, whereas trying to reach out to someone who might have suicidal ideation is a far more difficult task, especially if that person is reluctant to share their inner strife.

I'm not sure a campaign to prevent suicide is possible to do with any degree of success. It's a far more complex issue than trying to persuade drivers to be more careful and responsible on the roads.

That's not the view of a psychiatrist in the Irish Times today. Suicide rates have dropped by 30% here since 2000, and he sees no reason why they can't come down by that much again at least with the right approach. Obviously we will never be able to completely eliminate deaths by suicide, no more than we can ever completely eradicate road deaths. But I can't help but think how much quicker that rate would come down if suicide prevention/mental health services were given a fraction of the resources road safety is.

Just to be clear, I'm not advocating for resources to be taken away from road safety - it shouldn't be an either/or scenario. I just don't understand why there isn't a national outcry over suicide numbers, given they're almost three times higher than road deaths.

Anyway, I'll leave it there. Probably a discussion for another thread. Normal Bus Dope™️ whinging will resume tomorrow.