Be Excellent To Each Other

What place am I describing?

We all hate you, your big election is about the only positive issue that people want to discuss, and you're all fat, loud, arrogant and dislikeable. Never mind the environmental issues - just keep going on and on about your right to drive a car, whatever car you want, vroom vroom! I would say something sarcastic and nasty to conclude, but I'm happy in the knowledge that some terrorist strike will hopefully wipe you out anyway.

Discuss!

Wolverhampton?

The Wolverhampton Election?

No, can't be. You fail pathetically and miserably.

America?

Is this, perchance, one of your sporadic complaints about the apparently entirely baseless criticisms that people level at the US of A, CUS? Made by way of a poke at Londoners?

I can only approve.

Upper Volta, now known as Burkina Faso.

I think it's an amusing London/America dichotomy post.

CRASTER WINS.

Hooray! See, not cryptic or anything. Okay, I'm done now, abuse this thread as you will. That was all I wanted to do. La la la *skips off towards meadow*

It's true, too. All Londoners are fat and ugly.

Hitler>>>>>>>Americans ~ Londoners

Mayor of London, or US president?

WHY STOP AT ONE WHEN YOU CAN BE BOTH?

CUS is so clever sometimes that I wish he'd use his powers for good instead of evil.

It's OK, I've entered him in next year's Apprentice.

Missus.

You're a dick.

Your face is a dick.

Smokers.

Pah, that needed to have come before someone cracked Today's Tiresome Inscrutable Insult! really.

^Shit-faced cockmaster!

I have lived in London for 3 months in the past, and visited friends there quite a bit.

Every time I have to use the tube, I leave a little piece of my soul there. It genuinely upsets me how people will prioritise saving themselves a few seconds over being a polite decent human being. I have been barged out of the way by businessmen, I've seen people struggling with bags up stairs been ignored (and when I had the audacity to offer them help I get funny looks from passers by) and worst of all, I once stood up and offered my seat to an elderly gentleman who was finding it difficult to stay on his feet, and someone slipped in and took my seat before he could get in it. I tried to get them to stand up, but then it came to my stop so there was nothing else I could do.

This kind of attitude is obviously not exclusive to London, but I don't think I could ever live there full time.

It's an overwhelming place, fo' sho'.

Any major city's the same. I work with an American guy who can't stand New Yorkers as they're rude, always in a rush, etc.

I'm sure the French see Parisians in the same light, also.

Tourists! It's always bloody tourists who act like cunts on the tube. You can tell they're tourists because they're usually wearing unfortunate anoraks and bum bags. Whenever anyone asks for directions on the tube, you can bet that at least half a dozen strangers will muck in and try to help. I find there's an underlying sense of camaraderie on the tube, but maybe I'm just an idealistic twat.

Sorry, but bollocks.

I was at university in London and then worked there for 5 or 6 years, and the cuntiest, rudest, most ungentlemany pricks I've had the misfortune to encounter on public transport were almost without fail fellow commuters.

Well you can say 'bollocks' if you like, but that doesn't tally with my experience. Maybe your demeanor had something to do with the way people acted towards you.

What, sitting quietly, minding my own buisiness and offering my seat to women? Yeah, I'm a right cunt, me. So cuntish it causes people at the other end of the carriage to act like pricks to other people. Wow. That's some cuntery, right there, for it to have some sort of radioactive effect on complete strangers.

So maybe your demeanour had something to do with the way the tourists act, by that rationale?

Perhaps we've commuted on different bits of the underground and overground networks, then, as my experience with commuters was largely negative, and I know I'm not the only person to have found that to be the case. The tourists were annoying, of course, but in a hapless way rather than just rude.

This.

Barring journeys on the quieter ends of the lines like the piccadily, at least. I try to avoid using the tube wherever possible, but there have still been several times where I've walked past someone struggling with a heavy bag and hundreds of people just ignore them. Just last year I helped a couple of Mancunian women with some truly enormous bags up the stairs to Victoria station, and chatted to them a bit. I am generally one of the most antisocial people in the world, but nobody else appeared to even consider giving them a hand - and this wasn't rush hour or anything. And around Halloween, some Polish bloke was struggling to get up the stairs and very nearly fell over before I reached him, and I gave him my arm to lean on while we got the rest of the way up. A whole train full of people walked straight past him, and gave me funny looks for thinking that maybe letting some poor bastard dash his brains out wasn't the decent thing to do. It can be really depressing under the ground.

Tourists, as a rule, are more oblivious than anything, and do annoying htings like clog up doorways chatting, but they have at least some excuse - they're out having fun and excited, and in an unfamiliar place (in a country with all sorts of weird unspoken social rules). Mostly it's the regulars who are genuinely shitty though.

Using the tube at rush hour is, on the whole, a fairly unpleasant experience. This is because it is hard to be polite and happy whilst crammed tightly into a smelly train whilst in bodily contact with at least three strangers. I've seen lovely random acts of kindness on the tube, as well as acts of wankery. In fairness, I saw many similar things on buses when I lived in Manchester... *shrugs*

Rush hour tube aside (and thankfully I worked out a method of not having to use it), London is really rather marvellous. It's not too bad with headphones and an active imagination (or a book if you've room), and I certainly wouldn't let a few hours a week ruin my enjoyment of my lovely city.

Maybe Tmuk's only travelled off-peak? I've seen no acts of cuntery on the tube, but that's mainly because I've been visiting friends at the weekend or evenings and have never commuted.

P'raps.

Mrs Chris and I would pretty much every day have at least one tale of some unpleasant incident we had witnessed on the tube or train to or from work.

However, maybe that's just because we were travelling from South East London, and the Northern and Western Londoners were all the very model of courtesy to each other.

I lived there for 25 years, sometimes people are aresholes on the tube, sometimes they are not. But then I have the same issues with people on the bus/train in Exeter and Plymouth.

At rush hour it is very much everyone for themselves, but then whenever I was on there, I just didn't want stupid, slow people blocking the way when I wanted to get a horrible but necersarry journey out the way. So I worked out where I wanted to be in relation to getting off the platform quickly, or where the least crowded carriages would be, and made sure I got there as quick as possible, and then I would actually walk up/down the escalators to speed things up. The one thing I wouldn't do is attempt to get on the tube before people had got off. And I would certainly offer my seat to an old/disabled person if the chance was there.

Malc

Oi!

I love London. I didn't think I would, but I do.

I loved it for ages, but then once we'd had Junior the negatives just outweighed the positives - mainly because we didn't get to take advantage of the positives any more.

LALALA I'M NOT LISTENING

London is ace and I don't ever recall the rest of Britain being some kind of Utopia of public transport loveliness*. Yes people are cunts on the tube but you can find cunts wherever you go.

*maybe because you don't have any.

Well indeed. Tube with occasional cunt > Having to walk 30 mins to the nearest bus stop.

True, true.

But then driving through pretty Cotswold countyside>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>public transport.

Any form of Transport >>>>>>>Public Transport>Crawling naked on glass

I hate the way that nobody will help or will get out the way. Also hate the way people get on the tube even when it's obvious it's full.

I was rushing for a train with my trolley across Waterloo on Wednesday and I eventually came to the conclusion that if I builyt up enough momentum that people would just clear out of my path for risk of getting a broken ankle. Seemed to work.

Car > Tube > public transport

Although, if you move to within a few minutes' commute of your work, public transport can still > Car > Tube, since you don't have to park and stuff.

They really need to paint 'non-standing' paths on the floor of the Waterloo concourse.

Motorbike > Car > Tube > public transport

I managed to get back from work (26 miles away) in 30 minutes today, past all the tailbacks and whatnot. And had bloody good fun doing it. Excellent.

I like buses, generally. A bit. Not so much in central london, though (or manchester, come to think of it).

For long distance journeys, I love coaches, and sometimes trains. I'd hate to have to spend hours driving to another part of the country when I could just sit and relax and let my mind wander instead.

Absolutely. For long-distance journeys, you can't beat not having to concentrate on the driving yourself. For shorter journeys of 100 miles or less, though, driving is much better, faster and generally cheaper (in my experience so far).

Plus, you can fart and sing as much as you want without people taking offence. I'm sure the stress of driving is ultimately healthier than all the reluctant cigarettes smoked whilst waiting for a cancelled hourly train, on a miserable April morning.

The worst way to commute is to rely on catching multiple buses, with a wait and a walk between each, along routes that take you nowhere near any shops or businesses.

Trains are good for short hops, but the infrastructure obviously limits this. They're awesome for just hopping onto for a couple of minutes though, especially since there's a good chance of coming across a newsagent. Tiny provincial stations with generous parking facilities (inc. bike stands) AND decent shelter, are wonderful and precious things.

Strangely I'm the exact opposite. If I'm poking around London it has to be the tube, if I take a longer journey I want my car. (Although probably because that involves leaving the city)

At least partly because if I got see friends in Exeter for the weekend, Public means lugging a reasonable sized bag to the tube, changing twice then hoping my train (which cost an entirely random amount) is on time and has a seat so I don't have to stand for 3 hrs babying a back back). Then of course I have to be picked up at the station.

The car I point at the M4, then M5. It takes the same time and at least half the time is probably cheaper. Plus I can go when I want and leave when I want.

'Unsociable' or 'asocial', surely? If you were antisocial you'd have emptied the contents of their bags onto the tracks and called them Vera Duckworth.

1 person on the train/bus is probably cheaper than a car (for example my bus to work and back from Ivybridge to Exeter is £6, but yet it costs that much in petrol for just one way). When you start having to move a family, the car wins everytime in the value for money department.

Malc

Unbridled hatred of all living things comes out on top again!