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. 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. 16. Massaker Not meaning to be grim, but this week I attended a showing of a documentary by Monika Borgmann called Massaker, and having done so it is difficult not to reflect upon it. The subject of the film is a violent massacre that took place in two Palestinian refugee camps in 1982 at Sabra......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 14. The Right To Protest It seems to me that the government is particularly exposed whenever it is seen to block the right of its citizens to protest. Freedom of speech and the right to protest are two of the founding pillars of democracy, and that is what the government is fighting so many wars......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 12. History Repeating Itself? Gordon Brown is clearly still enjoying a prolonged honeymoon period. It must be so. Under ordinary circumstances it would be no surprise to see him suffer for being a leading member of a government that has overseen the second outbreak in 6 years of the debilitating Foot and Mouth disease. Instead......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 8. Cocomad It was the day of the Live Earth concerts, eight events in eight cities with a goal of raising awareness of the threat to planet Earth from climate change. The most significant cause of climate change is the burning of fossil fuels such as oil. So I guess it was a little ironic......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 7. Girl Power All in all, this has been a pretty major week. We’ve had the highs, lows and inevitable mud bath of the Glastonbury Festival. For an event that focused on the issue of climate change it is ironic that whilst its performers sang, the country was subjected to record downfalls amid unseasonable storms.......

This is a new weekend column brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 5. Testing, Testing So the Nice Movement is a political movement that aims to target and reduce anti-social behaviour. That term 'anti social behaviour' conjures up images of seriously mean looking children wearing hoodies as proudly as their ASBO status. But as the home office defines, anti-social behaviour is much more than that:......

This is a new weekend column brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 4. Doublethink The Big Brother silly season has started and this year it seems to have cut straight to the controversy in record time. So now seems an appropriate moment for Team Nice to risk potential ridicule and suggest that Big Brother does, with great eloquence and subtlety, deliver a message of huge......

This is a new weekend column brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 3. Moustaches and Manifestos So far, it’d been a pretty action packed day. First we’d seen the Shadow Minister for London, who had suggested that regard for issues of respect and social responsibility appeared to be on the rise after a period of neglect over recent years and decades. We’d then encountered the......

This is a new weekend column brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 2. The difference a few metres of tarmac makes Last week, Liz mentioned our meeting with Jacqui Lait, the Shadow Minister for London. Having left her office, we went in search of a pint but got sidetracked at Parliament Square. As you may know…on 2nd June 2001 Brian Haw set up a demonstration......