Northerners / Southerners - Are we really any different?

[bb21]

In Grimsby/Cleethorpes (up north) people politely queue at the bus stop. Kind of mandatory, so it seems.
In London and the south it seems to be "every man for himself".

In the south people also do that. It is a British thing. London is the one particularly bad place for it however I have noticed, especially with the tourists.

 

[CC 72100]

In the south people also do that. It is a British thing. London is the one particularly bad place for it however I have noticed, especially with the tourists.

Oh to be somewhere where the concept of queuing actually exists!

 

[Mojo]

Greggs is just a load of grease! Yuk

Agreed. Their food isn't particularly nice, nor is it even that cheap.

 

[306024]

Oh to be somewhere where the concept of queuing actually exists!

Remarkable as it sounds, try Canary Wharf Jubilee line platforms in the evening peak. People do indeed queue behind the platform doors. Occasional queue jumpers are ignored as no one will create a scene but generally it is very civilised considering the vast numbers of passengers.

 

[CC 72100]

Remarkable as it sounds, try Canary Wharf Jubilee line platforms in the evening peak. People do indeed queue behind the platform doors. Occasional queue jumpers are ignored as no one will create a scene but generally it is very civilised considering the vast numbers of passengers.

I'm impressed :P

Almost on the same subject - letting people off the train first. I know it's been debated a lot but today takes the biscuit....

Brand new tramline inaugurated today with free travel for the weekend* so there's generally a good atmosphere but at the same time it's very busy. Tram arrives at the terminus, and yet people are still trying to get on before people can get off. I mean, at the terminus of all places? Things were getting very fractious indeed, and the situation was only solved when everyone was told that actually the tram was going to sit in the headshunt for 5 minutes anyway so you're wasting your time I'm not sure whether such behaviour would happen to such an extent in the UK, be it in the North, South, or the forgotten Midlands!

*I'm sure for a not too insignificant percentage it will be 'free travel' every day of the year, but I'm wont't dwell on that too much!

 

[Mojo]

In my experience letting people off the train first is much more common on the London Underground than it is on the National Rail network.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Remarkable as it sounds, try Canary Wharf Jubilee line platforms in the evening peak. People do indeed queue behind the platform doors. Occasional queue jumpers are ignored as no one will create a scene but generally it is very civilised considering the vast numbers of passengers.

Perhaps there are many "Northern" people working in that area who have not yet been led down the path of queue incivility.

 

[GatwickDepress]

I haven't noticed any major differences between north and south. People seem to be people regardless whatever side of an ill-defined divide they happen to be on.

 

[bb21]

Agreed. Their food isn't particularly nice, nor is it even that cheap.

There is also quite a big price differential between their branches in the north and the south.

A few years back I remember in the same week I was charged 44p in a Leeds branch for a sausage roll, then 82p for the same thing in Stratford two days later.

 

[Mojo]

I went to both Sunderland and Bradford stores earlier in the year and many of their items were more expensive than available in Sainsburys, or other stores, including independent bakeries.

 

[theblackwatch]

In my experience letting people off the train first is much more common on the London Underground than it is on the National Rail network.

It used to be be much easier to force people to let you off first when slam door stock existed, as people on the platform would have to move out of the way in order for the door to be opened. On at least one occasion, before alighting, I had to say to those on the platform "I can't open the door until you move out of the way" or similar.

Nowadays, it seems a lot of passengers can't even work out how to open a slam door....

 

[northwichcat]

Nowadays, it seems a lot of passengers can't even work out how to open a slam door....

Given there can be people around 30 years old who've never been on slam door stock and the door opening procedure being unconventional. Is that surprising?

 

[AndyLandy]

Given there can be people around 30 years old who've never been on slam door stock and the door opening procedure being unconventional. Is that surprising?

I suspect it depends on where the doorhandles are. I expect most people would be able to work out how to open a slam-door if there's a handle on the inside.

However, the crazy mk3 design where you have to hang out of the window is so totally alien and unintuitive, it's unsurprising that some people don't figure it out.

It even happened to me once. I was pretty used to slam-door stock once upon a time, but then we got 444s and Voyagers down here to replace it all. It was years before I had reason to be on an HST again and I was just as confused as anyone. I'd completely forgotten that you had to hang out the window and it took me a moment of handle-searching before the memory came back to me.

 

[CC 72100]

I'd completely forgotten that you had to hang out the window and it took me a moment of handle-searching before the memory came back to me.

I remember on a school trip on a HST in a small group of us, they wondered what on earth I was doing as I leaned out the window on arriving back in Gloucester. I think for a moment they thought I was going to bypass the whole 'opening the door' step and was just going to dive for it!

 

[Lrd]

Saw this posted on facebook and thought it'd be appropriate here.

 

[306024]

Perhaps there are many "Northern" people working in that area who have not yet been led down the path of queue incivility.

Can't be that, we've programmed the ticket barriers to detect Northerners to prevent them reaching the platform in the first place

The platforms at Canary Wharf are very wide so maybe that is why people queue, simply because they have the space to do so.

 

[bb21]

Saw this posted on facebook and thought it'd be appropriate here.

Tallies with my understanding of "the North" then.

 

[Muzer]

Pokesdown and Boscombe are the names of two neighbouring suburbs, but tbh all my mates and I have always referred to the wider area as Boscombe, since it has a pier, and the football club is named after it (or was rather), therefore more famous.

Yep - sorry, it was a rather poor attempt at humour on my part (that most of us only know where places are by hearing them on station announcements/looking at timetables/trackmaps )
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I was surprised the first time I looked at the Network Area map, as it corresponded pretty much exactly with my definition of "the south". Having grown up in Worcestershire I always felt "on the border" somehow, south of us was Gloucestershire and the south west with their friendly ways and accents, north of us was Birmingham which always seemed rude and abrasive when I visited. Having subsequently lived in the East Midlands, and then Yorkshire I've always felt the North was sufficiently different to the Midlands not to group them together.

I'd therefore mess the whole theory up and have "the South", "the North", "the Midlands" and "the (South) West"...

Ah - so by your definition of south, Exeter is in the south if you approach it from the south, but if you try to approach it from the north, the south stops at Bedwyn?

 

[maniacmartin]

The Jubilee line is interesting. My local tube station, Canada Water, has platform edge doors. Every day there are neat orderly queues next to the doors for trains to Canary Wharf, and a throng of disorganised people trying to shove past to get on the trains to the City/Central London. The difference in behaviour is very noticeable when they're both on opposite sides of the same island platofrm

 

[DaveNewcastle]

I was surprised to hear a description of "a northern town" being presented to make a point while I was in the Supreme Court last week.
The argument concerned the tort of Nuisance, and whether a person can come to live in a place where the traditional noises of the place disturb them and then take action in Law to have the noise of those traditions stopped.

I think that all the Law Lords on that occasion were Southerners.

One Counsel referred to Lord Denning's famous 1977 remarks on the subject when a newcomer complained about that most English of pastimes, the noise of cricket balls hit by willow bats : "In Summertime, village Cricket is the delight of everyone. Nearly every village has its own cricket field where the young men play and the old men watch." *.
In that case, an injuction had been granted against the Cricket Club to stop the nuisance after a new home was built right next to the cricket ground and the newcomers couldn't stand the noise of the balls being hit, so they had the cricket stopped.

To refute that position, Counsel for the residents asked the court to imagine "a northern mill town". A town whose mills are belching smoke and fumes everywhere and with clanging machines that are heard throught the town, and where the mills provide the lifeblood of the community, support the community with work and income, even the reason for the community to be there.

I guessed he hadn't been to any "northern mill towns" in the last 50 years, then. Though, he probably had read Dickens' "Hard Times".
If he'd made a visit to 'the mill' in Skipton, for example, he would have found himself in the very smart new Council Offices. Very calm and quiet they are, too.

I looked round the Court to see if anyone else was as shocked as I was at this fanciful description of "the north", but no-one acknowledged my bemused stare.
Isn't it odd to be so mistaken about so much of one's own country?

[ * It's ironic that Denning's speech about village Cricket was actually about a village in a northern town, Lintz, in that former mining stronghold - County Durham ]

 

[nathanclass323]

There is also quite a big price differential between their branches in the north and the south.

A few years back I remember in the same week I was charged 44p in a Leeds branch for a sausage roll, then 82p for the same thing in Stratford two days later.

Discrimination pricing is a very popular pricing strategy with high street chains. The company looks at which socio-economic groups are most prominent in the area and sets their price accordingly. Generally speaking, in Stratford there are more people in socio-economic groups A and B than there are in Leeds. Remember that rent on a commercial property is probably also higher in Stratford than in Leeds due to the proximity to London compared to Leeds.

You may have already knew that but I just wanted to throw that in for those who may not be so knowledgable on pricing strategies.

 

[fowler9]

Discrimination pricing is a very popular pricing strategy with high street chains. The company looks at which socio-economic groups are most prominent in the area and sets their price accordingly. Generally speaking, in Stratford there are more people in socio-economic groups A and B than there are in Leeds. Remember that rent on a commercial property is probably also higher in Stratford than in Leeds due to the proximity to London compared to Leeds.

You may have already knew that but I just wanted to throw that in for those who may not be so knowledgable on pricing strategies.

You've got to keep them separated.