This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 51. Natural Selection and Altruism on The Tube – Part 2: Tube Prisoners Dilemma A couple of weeks ago I spoke of 'Tube Utopia', the story of Tube-Dove's and Tube-Hawks on the London Underground. The story borrows shamelessly from natural selection and things like that, and as such it tries to demonstrate three things: 1.......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 49. Tube driver talk I was getting on the Northern Line the other morning and the young guy that speaks on the tannoy, announcing the trains, made the commuters a little bit happier. He stood in the middle of the platform, speaking into his speaker-thingy in a such a way that it was as if......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 48. Good Morning Saying good morning is something that we all do; we all have our routines of who we say good morning to – our family, partner or flatmates, the newspaper man, our work colleagues. But we all have those people who we see every working day, but ignore. The woman who has the......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 47. Last Orders As soon as Boris announced the ban of drinking on public transport, it felt like everyone had the same idea of a drinking party on the tube. The more organised of us set up Facebook events, and the most popular of these parties self-propelled their numbers into the thousands, till everyone knew......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 46. Misunderstood Signals Along with an unhealthy obsession with social interaction on London’s public transport (which is what Team Nice investigates), I am very superstitious. Saluting magpies and not walking across three drains is an everyday occurrence. Crossing the road at the traffic lights the other day, I sidestepped the third drain, and in doing......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 45. Talking on the tube A couple of weeks ago, I did a little poll about people not talking to each other on the tube. I was on a tube the other day and in a whirlwind, three mysterious men jumped on and started slapping stickers on the inside walls and windows. The stickers were......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 44. Neighbours So do you talk to your neighbours? Some of us do, some of us don’t. Some of us are polite but wouldn’t engage in a street party, some of us prefer to have the wonderful anonymity that London brings. Is being part of a community a good thing or a bad thing? Good......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 44. The driving test Driving in London is a wonderful environment for social interaction studies. Most London drivers, when trying to join a busy line of traffic from a parallel parked position will edge their out until they force the next car to stop and allow them through. Most of this is without eye contact.......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 43. Kids, music, and mobile phones Last week I was told to turn my music down on a train, as unbeknown to me, my earphones were rubbish and other commuters could hear my embarrassingly loud music. But now let’s talk about those people who actually play their mobile phones like little mini stereos for us......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 42. Listening Got on my train last night, listening to my iPod and reading a book. From out of nowhere a man comes up to me and starts saying something to me. I take an earphone out and to my utter horror he says: “Can you turn that music down?” Oooh, he had a bit......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 41. Piss Poor Personal Space Getting on a packed tube is stressful. We all know that – everyone is worried that they won’t get on, so they push and then someone has to say, “Can you move down please?” (and no matter how you say that – it weirdly always sounds aggressive). Then because you......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 40. Altruism? For a couple of years now, I have given up quite a large chunk of my spare time to do nice things for free, and so have so many other people too. It seems so strange to me that we would all do this – after all for what purpose? What do we......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 39. Consider I stepped off the tube at Bank the other morning to let some people off, and because it was so packed it took ages. All of a sudden the driver announces that he is about to shut the doors and I yelp and (in a ‘every man for himself’ style) dive back on......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 38. Better Living Through KaraUke There lives in each of us a Little Performer. Once when we were young enough not to know any better, the Little Performer made frequent and regular appearances – sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. No family's home video collection would be complete without them. But then something happens, we......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 37. Fashionably Nice – Ties It’s official, to be nice is on trend. A fashion designer friend of mine told me of an article she had seen on WGSN (a paid subscription service for the fashion industry that forecasts future trends), forecasting that fashion would get a bit more wholesome and nice. It used inspiration......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 36. Art Attack Last week I mentioned about TfL's campaign to encourage better manners on public transport. The main issues I have with this and TfL's other advertising for this issues are that the new posters do not appear where they are needed (actually in-situ on the carriage) the characters are possibly not well suited......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 36. In the nicest possible way… Commuting has got lots of anti-social elements to it – Tfl have just launched this lovely campaign about getting on together – it consists of posters around London stations, and then buried deep right at the back of the wardrobe of the corporate TfL website, so deep in fact......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 35. Be nice to transport workers Tomorrow is Be Nice To Transport Workers Day. This is day that Team Nice created last year, and we’ve decided to make it a bit of an annual thing. Team Nice’s main aim started off as a campaign to try and make commuters lives a bit easier, by the use......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 34. Benefit of the Doubt As the popular saying goes, if you don't want to start a fight there are two subjects to avoid in conversation, politics and religion. That being the case, the Archbishop of Canterbury is probably going to get in trouble every time he opens his mouth. It’s his job to talk......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 33. Office Robots Following on from the theme of Office Culture and the influence this can have on how nice we are to each other… this week I started thinking about the actual role we do all day, every day… Now, I realise that lately it's been a very easy thing to take shots at......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 32. Office Boy Band So recently I have been looking at office culture and anti-social issues within the workplace. Purely because over the years I have found that some offices are really friendly and some are not. Whilst every workplace will have peculiar individuals, an office culture sits in the air of the building, and......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 31. Office Sociology We all know how we our personality type can be taken into account for our role within our work place. Sometimes our personalities are chosen to make the perfect team, like a manufactured boy band. But what about the subculture within the office itself? And then what about the effect on our......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 30. Office Politics New Year, and a for me a new job, new office and a load of new work colleagues. Within minutes of me being there I noticed something rather incredible. The IT chap came over to set up my PC then scampered off. I needed to ask him something so asked the girls......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 29. Bystander Eageration… After being made redundant the other week, I was offered some work by a friend who runs a market stall selling Christmas gifts. It’s chilly work but my silly dance moves to keep warm have amused the customers, and their weird behaviour has kept me very interested in them. Weirdly, the less......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 28. Corporate People I watched the documentary ‘The Corporation’ the other day. It’s something that a friend told me to watch, after I had drunkenly ranted “Argh! It’s all about the loss of engagement, Lorraine!” What I was trying to explain at the time by ‘the loss of engagement’ was my idea that we detach......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 27. Self Improvement Team Nice is a large collective of people of varying ages, professions interests. Any organisation has to be diverse in its skill-sets because an organisation boasting say, 200 people, who can all knit a perfect jumper but cannot do much else will run into problems. So if you accept the idea that......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 26. Lazy or Incapable? It’s never been easy being a supporter of the England football team. The experience can best be summed up as a periodic frenzy of heightened expectation followed by unexpected and yet inevitable disappointment. And this week, so it was again. Should we have learnt our lesson by now? Expectations have been......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 25. Fancy that Last night was the third niceties tokens party. Our one-year birthday. It was a really fun night, and because Team Nice teamed up with Bring Stuff (meet ups and social events with a fancy dress theme) guests where requested to bring hats and wigs to wear and share. The atmosphere in the......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 24. Llamas As Team Nice and the Niceties Campaign is a year old, last week we spoke of niceties tokens, which is the mechanism that started Team Nice. So this week I thought I would speak a little bit more about Team Nice. Team Nice is an ever-growing group of people (currently just under 1,000)......

A new sculpture for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square is unveiled today. Elbowing Marc Quinn's Alison Lapper Pregnant out of the way (rudely ignoring all the current efforts of Team Nice) is German artist Thomas Schütte's Model for a Hotel 2007 and it replaces Quinn's cool, white, serene statue of a round-stomached Lapper with something distinctly more colourful and quirky. After a two year gestation period, Alison Lapper Pregnant has been taken down......