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. 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. 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)......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 23. A little bit of niceness It’s nearly a year since the Niceties Token campaign began, so I wanted to talk a little bit about it. A Niceties Token is a small Fimo clay object with ‘niceties-token.com’ written on one side and a name on the other. There are now about 1,500 of these tokens......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 22. Badge of honour Hurrah, Team Nice’s prototype for badges for pregnant women has been made. It’s too early to tell how effective they will be. If you have a bun in the oven, or indeed know of someone who does, please email team.nice@niceties-token.com and we can send you some, as we really want to......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 21. Preggers As a pregnant London commuter, my mate Tash sometimes does get a seat on the train, but sometimes she doesn't. However if she does get a seat, it's usually offered by a man. I hypothesise that this is possibly to do with the fact that she is a very attractive lady, and a......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 20. Kids Today I discovered this conversation on Fridaycities – the London social network site (if you want to join it you might need this code: pfpxc3ogqu5). They were discussing why people think that so many kids are stabbing each other. A few different points were made about this, one being that knife crime and......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 19. Spinning Argh! No wonder there is apathy. At the time of writing this, a general election is still undecided, although if Gordon Brown goes ahead with it, it could lead to a really exciting time. They are going to really be schmoozing us lot, as our demographic are least likely to vote. In preparation......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 18. Social Revolution? When I was a kid, television was dominated by the game show, like The Price Is Right or Bulls Eye. I think the appeal was through empathy of that elated feeling of winning something great… Bully’s special prize. Then our society changed. Reality television took over, we became more interested in how......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 17. Yeah whatever I did a little poll about why so many of us are apathetic towards politics. The subject of politics is so huge and disparate that it’s overwhelming, so for this I focused on the issue of tax. Now, once again the numbers were incredibly small (24) but have a read, as the......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 15. Poll-itics II Last week we did a little poll about what people thought was important to some of the topical political parties. What is the most important thing to our political parties then? There is so much information on these parties that it is tricky to tell. But from a quick look at their......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 14. Poll-itics Well, I did a quick little poll this week amongst group of 26 professional people aged 20 – 35. Just to ask them what they thought were the most and least important issues to the following parties: Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Green, Socialist, BNP and UKIP. The results produced from this (admittedly tiny)......

Confusion Over the past few weeks we have been speaking to a number of different people involved in politics. MP's, councillors, people with strong opinions and people with no political opinions. Basically, you are either really into politics or you're not. There are not that many people who sit on the fence on this point. A lot of people are not interested in politics because they find it confusing and intimidating. This apathy is......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 13. Rehabilitation? This week Team Nice quizzed Liberal Democrat Councillor Simon Carter of Lewisham Borough Council. The topic ran to antisocial behaviour and whether our solutions are up to scratch. What got you interested in politics, and what made you get involved in the liberal democrat party and why? I got involved in Politics because......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 11. Marmite And Socialism Who feels comfortable about talking politics? The people that I know fall into two categories… Some people don't really feel comfortable talking about politics, particularly with people they don't know. This is not because they are worried that they will offend them (the 'never talk about politics, religion or money' rule)......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 10. Integrity So about Jacqui Smith and the… erm… ‘crazy drug fuelled youth of half the cabinet’. Don’t you just cringe when politicians are backed in to a corner and have to squirm? Then they go back, have a meeting with the rest of the cabinet to orchestrate their best response. So it would seem......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 9. Corporate Social Responsibility? I reckon the Tories were on to a goodun when they began their social responsibility gubbins which, throbbing away, is “the heart of modern conservatism”. Not sure who started it first but all the big corporate have been lapping it up too for a while now. As Mr Google will show......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 6. Dizzy Lizzy Previously: It's easy for us all to 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… This was......

This is a new weekend column brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. Pendulums So this week, Jacqui Lait MP, the Shadow Minister for London invited Pete and me to Westminster for a chat about niceness. Before I start this – I must stress that Team Nice is not politically biased towards any political party. All we want to do is improve niceness. Jacqui, Pete and......