Mindless babble of the robots on the Tube

You know, the Underground bobble - those round things dangling from the carriage ceiling that you were meant to hang on to. D7115, the very last unrefurbished District Line train, the very last one with bobbles on the whole network, finished its final run at 12.30 last Saturday morning. Another of those little only-in-London things that's no longer anywhere at all.

Also gone: the nice ridged wooden floors (maple, they were), and the cheerful orange insides of the doors - both replaced by the ubiquitous suicide-grey plastic so beloved, and so revealing, of our ghastly masters. But worst of all, they have taken away the silence. D7115 was the very last Tube train without automated announcements.

Once, you could travel by Underground hearing no more than the noise of the wheels. It remains, of course, a serious crime for any Tube passenger to speak, but TfL has given us some new friends to fill the gap. Well, just one friend - Emma Hignett, the "voice of London transport" - but she won't bloody shut up.

This station is Bethnal Green. This train is for Hainault via Newbury Park. Please keep your belongings with you at all times. Beggars and ticket touts operate on this station. If you see one, please inform a member of staff. The next station is Mile End. This train is for Hainault via Newbury Park.

Then there is that jarring, jangling screech to tell us the doors are opening, and those high-pitched beeps to let us know the doors are, well, closing. But we can see, and we can read.

And in the unlikely event that we are blind, we can count the stops, or ask. Every trip is an aural shelling, and now it's on the buses too.

The 253 boasts about two announcements a minute. At each stop, they say its name, the route number and the final terminus. Loudly. But if I'm getting off, what do I care where the bus will be in 20 minutes' time?

Once the bus pulls away, they announce the route number and destination again. Perhaps it's another thing for the blind. But does any blind person just board a random bus, then wait for the announcement to check they're on the right one?

Interspersed with all this: bossy little reminders that fare dodging is a crime, and you should pull up your socks and get an Oyster card. I don't know about you, but being lectured by a robot makes me want to hit someone (although not the robot, obviously - I'd hurt my hand).

The autistic announcements are another sad example of how London Transport, a beacon of aesthetics and consideration for passengers, has become TfL, an anti-human, technocratic, bendy-bus-loving disaster - not unsuccessful, but to many of us somehow hateful.