Commuters – do you realise that if you all put 10p into a pot you could easily raise enough money to run a PR campaign to raise your profile. You certainly need it. Rarely has there been a collective/group more misunderstood and maligned. ‘Bad rep’ would be an understatement…

In actual fact, I think you’ll find, it would not be that hard a PR task to crack. Commuters are not that bad. We are actually surprisingly nice, given just how many of us there are and how much crap we have to put up with travelling on public transport. For example:

• On the whole, we do wait for passengers leaving the carriage to exit before we get on (and it’s worth noting that no one who travels between the hours of 10am and 4pm seems to understand the logic of this)

• People will move down the carriage or lift to make space for others… if asked politely

• Yes, there is a lack of personal space and some forward shuffling, but generally when the gates have been shut for a while and there is a backlog of people, we get through without issue or a need a resort to violence

• And people DO get up for the elderly and pregnant women! I have seen it on repeated occasion so it is true. I myself – a pregnant woman of four months – have not had to stand once since it became obvious that I was ‘with child’. Not once. Ok, I make damn sure that everyone can seem me and wear the most bump-promoting clothes I can, but still… they are giving me their seats and should be praised for it

So club together, Mr & Mrs Commuter, and give us a budget we can get our teeth into. And we’ll quickly turn that terrible public reputation around!

Um, now I think about it, and before I sign off, I would like to have a quick rant on a connected subject… the perpetual myth that ‘Londoners are rude’. Well as a Londoner, who knows lots of other Londoners, I can tell you that this is not universally true. People can be rude. There are lots of people in London. So some people in London are rude. But does that not mean that ‘Londoners are rude’. In fact, in the most part this myth is perpetuated by non-Londoners moving into town with the pre-conceived notion that ‘Londoners are rude’, so they often feel its acceptable to forget all the manners that their parents so lovingly instilled in them.

Londoners, themselves, have no reason to be rude. No more reason than anyone else has to be to their fellow townsmen, at any rate.

So enough of this Londoner-bashing please.

And btw, Londoners, you know where you find us if you want us to run a campaign on your behalf too. Consider my 10p pledged.