Team Nice Gets Political

By Hazel Last edited 201 months ago
Team Nice Gets Political
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This is a new weekend column brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice.

5. Testing, Testing

So the Nice Movement is a political movement that aims to target and reduce anti-social behaviour.

That term 'anti social behaviour' conjures up images of seriously mean looking children wearing hoodies as proudly as their ASBO status. But as the home office defines, anti-social behaviour is much more than that: "Anti-social behaviour is any activity that impacts on other people in a negative way."

So whilst slapping criminal charges on anyone letting a pregnant woman stand on a tube train might be a bit full on, it still is an anti-social act.

Last month the Prime Minister introduced the 'respect zones' which are to receive extra money to fight anti-social behaviour .

And we are familiar with David Cameron and the infamous hug-a-hoodie speech. But when he was defending it, he did state that he wanted "to understand what's gone wrong in these children's lives". Fair play. If you want to proactively improve situations you need to understand why things are like they are. Don't you?

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Leaving the real politicians to sort out the extreme cases of bad manners, Team Nice will investigate why we are all a little bit anti-social.

What makes us leave that pregnant woman standing? The bloke struggling to get his luggage up the stairs? Or the tourist, left standing, baffled by the street map. Team Nice is researching this and so far our findings (which will be published in a full report on our website in September) are that we are more shy than rude.

It's easy for us all look away, but if you were sitting on a bus and someone directly asked you, very politely, if they could sit down because they were about to pass out, would anyone (who was able) refuse? (For research purposes only, I'll test this out, and report on it next week)

And if we are just shy (pending on the proof) – can we coax good manners out of the rest of us?

By Peter Muriuki and Liz Akers

Image priority seat taken from Ludita's Flickr photo stream under the Creative Commons Deed.

Last Updated 17 June 2007