Anytime I’ve visited the US the queuing protocol is akin to Brit standards, in Walmart the people are patient and courteous, even the badly dressed ones *
In Fast Food outlets however, anarchy is present, with queue jumping an unfortunate
symptom of the need to eat vast amounts of stodgy deep fried chicken.
Strengths ties it, plus has three consonants before the vowel, for an 8-1 ratio of vowels to consonants.
Eighths also ties it with five.
The reason they enjoyed waiting in lines in Soviet Russia is because the queues waited on THEM!
I recall reading about it in the news when the law was abolished. They interviewed a lot of people in the street for their opinion on it, and not a single one had been aware it was a law in the first place. Really. They were all surprised to discover it. Queuing up was just what was done.
I’ve read essays by H.L. Mencken in the Twenties where he talked about the awfulness of English food. He said the only good thing was mutton, which he attributed to English grass.
It is possible that the politeness is an obsolete stereotype also.
The actor John Cleese talks about the rise of a ‘yob culture’.
I’m not precisely sure what he means by yobs, but it doesn’t sound like a compliment, but it isn’t clear if he is talking about England in general or just London.
I’m British and this is how I understand the stereotype. It’s often mentioned in the context of lift queues at ski resorts in the Alps - the gist being that British skiers need to leave their polite queuing technique at home and sharpen their elbows, or they’ll get shoved to the back of the line.
Yob is a term coined by a prominent satirist who, when writing about soccer hooligans, said that these shouldn’t be called boys, but yobs (boys backwards). So yes, it’s derogatory for louts or uncultured, childish people with no manners.
[my embolden]
Moreover slightly comical and cartoon-like, and as you say very artificial. I’d be surprised if most Americans favor that look; it seems as though it’s fashionable amongst those who go crazy with plastic surgery too, but not your average guy in the street.
The use of herbs and spices was to overcome the taste of rotten meats, and so because the UK generally doesn’t have much of a problem with keeping meat cold - for 9 months of the year anyway - this could be the reason for the ‘blandness’ of the food before spices made their way over, and then there was always the limitations of cost preventing most people from using them on a regular basis.
If you delve into spying before and during the Cold War, for example The Cambridge Spies and in MI6 you’ll find lots of links between the UK and Soviet governments. The Labour Party was especially infiltrated with those who had links to Soviet Russia.
Which is interesting because line jumping is practically a federal offense in the US. Ski lifts usually have at least one attendant monitoring the lift line for line-skip hooliganism. I really don’t think the UKians are exceptionally different from USians in the matter of queuing, or, if you will, standing in line. I see people in orderly lines waiting for the bus all the time in NYC. However I will say that one wouldn’t stand in line if there were 3 or fewer people and if you aren’t sure if someone is on a line you just ask – maybe this is where we depart from our Limey friends in the matter of line-standing.
This is a very strange application of the “don’t be too polite in foreign places” advice: in ski lifts in German, Austrian and Italian Alps I have never seen shoving because it would quickly develop into a case of dominoes, esp. in the beginners skilifts. I have noticed an increase in seat lifts and decrease of the T-pulls, apparently because too many beginners fall out of them (the latter, not the former).
I found the passage I recalled. He wrote it in 1930. It starts like this.
I think that’s right. The difference with the stereotype is that Americans will tend to be much more interactive when forming a line - they’ll ask if it really is a line, what it’s for, etc. The stereotype of British culture is that it’s so overly polite and deferring that people will see a potential queue and just quietly join it. Hence the jokes about queues forming for no reason, etc.
Think under-30 male trailer trash or redneck.
His exact words were “OK. Leave this to me. I’m British. I know how to queue”, with the appropriately authoritative tone.
Yob is much, much older than this. A quick check on line suggests it was coined in the mid-nineteenth century as Cockney “backslang”.
The definition’s right though: youthful, ignorant, loutish - normally male. Not sure if my interpretation would be standard but I do not associate it particularly with class - you can have an upper class yob as easily as a working class yob.
Absence of the word “French” duly noted. 
(They’re the main culprits, in my experience…)
A friend of mine used to repeat over and over how much better passengers in the London underground were at letting people get off the trains before they barged in themselves as compared to Stockholm (I hadn’t bothered to notice whatever differences there were in behaviour between the two cities), so eventually I began to study people. My conclusion was that the Londoners were very ill behaved compared to Stockholmers.
Yes, the much described Stockholm Syndrome.
I used to think people in Paris metro rush inside before letting others out before going to Rome.