Too Ready To Follow Orders?
If you have ever wondered why it is that the British people – unlike many others - have not managed to have a revolution in the past three centuries, then some pictures I took yesterday might go some way to explaining.
It was a Sunday afternoon and I was outside Waterloo station. The word outside is emphasised for a reason. For paranoia about smoking has reached such a ridiculous height that the powers that be see fit not only to ban smoking indoors – even in places of entertainment which individuals choose or choose not to attend – but to pen smokers in when outside.
Here you see one such pen outside Waterloo. It clearly served no useful function. For a start there were virtually no non smokers around. If there were they could have easily dodged the smoke or faced a split second of discomfort. Meanwhile there was nobody around to tell people off for standing in the wrong place. Yet to my astonishment, every smoker (myself excluded) felt compelled to do what the sign told them and stand in the small metal pen before lighting up – as you can see. We must be the most easily governable people in history. In other news I recently found that lighting up in an enclosed public space is easier to get away with than one might imagine.
Reader Comments
We Brits certainly do know how to queue. Find us a line and we’ll go stand quietly at the back of it. But by God don’t we do it better than any other nation.
I have also noticed outside airports they paint boxes on the floor for smokers to stand inside, and people actually do.
Im sure if they asked people to stand on one leg while puffing the result wopuld be much the same.
The queueing thing I actually like. A queue is democratic in that the largest/most intimidating people do not get prefferential treatment and it is the most eficient way for a large number of people to be seen individually by a small number of people. In most contexts (“please move down inside the carridge” for example, or “do not turn up late to meetings and then shout at team members because they are full”) following instructions as a default is a useful human trait.
I may have read too much into the above article.
queues are good manners what gets me is the reaction to the govt giving trillions to big banks in any decent country we should have chased them out of town with pitchforks , the countrys gone to hell .
a while ago I saved a girl who was having her head stomped on by this skinhead who said he was her boyfriend this was in broad daylight on sat afternoon in a town with at least a hundred people watching and doing nothing , the countrys gone to hell .
I was thinking what it would actually take to get a revolution in the uk and god knows the whole place is so spineless its a damn shame the whole thing makes me want to leave
Jonathan,
I hate to break it to you, but revolutions are dangerous things, not the romanticised struggle between heroic workers and their bourgeoise opressors that they are so frequently made out to be.
This incident with the girl and her ‘boyfriend’ sounds tragic and my sympathy goes out to her, but take a moment to think where the blame really lies and how it can be resolved.
The answer is democratic, not revolutionary. Im sure I dont need to describe the ramifications of a revolution. Riots, protests, crowd-dispersal, arrests. Just look at Revolutionary Russia and the massacres that took place.
It isn’t spinlessness that prevents the British People from revolting, it is a sound belief in democracy and a fair deal of common sense.
megalolz @ tom
good blog you have here by the way, liked the galloway article by salman also. Being a UEA student myself it is good to see UEA produce talented writers!
Cheers Adrian, glad you liked the article. What are you studying at UEA?
if non smokers are not permitted in the pen them I’m all for it, I don’t have to put up with people moaning and coughing then. ‘get out of my pen, you dirty non smoker, you make me sick’.
Steve, that’s like saying Jews should have been happy they didn’t have to put up with any annoying gentiles in the ghetto!
I think steve’s comment was in jest it certainly made me lol. And i agree . Someone really should do study of passive non-smoking, i.e. The way the general twattishness and bad chat oof non smokers affects even those who consume a sufficient amount of tobacco
I know Steve’s comment was in jest, so was mine. I wouldn’t intentionally break Godwin’s law!