{"id":14097,"date":"2024-05-17T12:22:25","date_gmt":"2024-05-17T12:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/?p=14097"},"modified":"2024-05-19T12:07:36","modified_gmt":"2024-05-19T12:07:36","slug":"blakeys-discourteous-successors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/?p=14097","title":{"rendered":"Blakey’s discourteous successors"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CyrilFrom 1969 to 1973, ITV aired a comedy entitled On The Buses<\/em><\/a>. One of the main characters in this mixture of sexism and misogyny that passed for humour at the time was Cyril ‘Blakey’ Blake (right) played by actor Stephen Lewis<\/a>. One of the duties of inspectors in those days was to check passengers were travelling with valid tickets.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Skip forward half a century and inspectors have been replaced by so-called Revenue Protection Officers<\/em><\/a>, by First<\/s>WorstBus, which along with its fellow WorstGroup subsidiary GWR, has a virtual public transport monopoly in the Greater Bristol area. GWR also employs Revenue Protection Officers<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Your ‘umble scribe had the misfortune to encounter two of these successors to Blakey yesterday afternoon, when they board a no. 24 service on the Stapleton Road. Dressed like pound shop police officers but with the words Revenue Protection Officers<\/em> embroidered on the back of their uniform, the larger of the two proceeded to address the bottom deck of the bus: “Hi guys. Please have your tickets and passes ready for inspection”.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Guys?<\/em> Neither we the travelling public nor you are American! Besides that, guys in this country normally end up on bonfires<\/a> every 5th November<\/a> or thereabouts.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

That was informality bordering on the discourteous, which got your correspondent thinking of a more courteous and appropriate form of address, after a long discussion with others on social media yesterday and more especially bearing in mind the fact that some degree of formality is required when dealing with the public in a formal\/official capacity.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

First of all the Hi!<\/em> needs ditching. Far too informal. As an interjectory greeting, it dates to the 1860s and originates in the American Midwest<\/a>. It should be replaced by a Good (morning\/afternoon\/evening)<\/em> (delete as appropriate. Ed.<\/em>).<\/p>\r\n\r\n

That’s the easy bit done. In these enlightened times ladies and gentlemen<\/em> might not cover how everyone chooses to identify, e.g. the non-binary<\/a>. Everyone<\/em> would therefore seem to be the most apposite way to address a diverse inner-city busload of passengers. So, for the benefit of any passing WorstBus successors to Blakey, my suggested form of greeting when doing your job would be: Good (morning\/afternoon\/evening), everyone. Please have your tickets and passes ready for inspection, please!<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From 1969 to 1973, ITV aired a comedy entitled On The Buses. One of the main characters in this mixture of sexism and misogyny that passed for humour at the time was Cyril ‘Blakey’ Blake (right) played by actor Stephen Lewis. One of the duties of inspectors in those days was to check passengers were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,3,34],"tags":[40,36,16,22,35],"class_list":["post-14097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bristol","category-translation-and-language-related-matters","category-social-media","tag-bristol","tag-comment","tag-english-usage","tag-language","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14097"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14126,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14097\/revisions\/14126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}