LONDON (AFP) - Foreign students visiting Britain are to be educated in the etiquette of queuing for buses, after local users complained about them not observing the conventions of standing in line.Southern Vectis, which operates buses on the Isle of Wight, off England's south coast, said it was to contact local language schools following several complaints about the behaviour of young students over the summer months.
"On the Isle of Wight we get lots of foreign language students staying with families," said operations manager March Morgan Huws.
"In their cultures, they do not queue for buses where they live and there is a scrum every time a bus turns up, while in British culture there is a nice orderly queue.
"We have had quite a few complaints from residents who queue up in an orderly fashion then all those foreign students push past them.
"What we have said is that we will work with the language schools to provide some instructions on the etiquette of queuing. We won't be marching the students up and down showing them how to queue, we will just leave it up to the group leaders to pass on the information."
Orderly queuing -- as seen during the recent Northern Rock banking crisis -- is seen as a quintessentially British convention. One social anthropologist believes Britons are even capable of forming one-person queues at bus stops.
British Teach Foreign Students How To Stand In Line
I know a whole group of people who could use these lessons, not that I think it would work.
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6 comments:
I am British and I totally agree that the British are capable of forming a one-person queue. If you are the first person at the bus stop, you still stand in the 'right' place i.e. where you would stand if you were at the front of the queue.
I like the British way. It's fair!
Love it!
This makes me want to tell the only funny philosophy joke I ever encountered (my grad work was in phil) unfortunately, it's a visual....
(If it helps, the joke is "If p, then q")
Throw a couple of the anti-social bastards UNDER the bus and I bet they'd catch on PDQ!
That is hilarious and fantastic. Having queued in Britain myself, I know it's true- they're good at being orderly, the British.
I like the British way. It's fair!
Fair or not, I can think of a few places in which the fair way would leave you standing on the curb.
Alice,
It made me smile.
KRG,
I believe you, but I think that I need to see it.
Mark,
Could be.
Chana,
You're right, I have seen it.
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