On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 03:11:20 GMT, "Lennart Petersen"
wrote:


"BB" skrev i meddelandet
...
On 9 Mar 2004 11:24:06 -0800, Bradwell Jackson wrote:
Please share with us what your worst tout experience was.

What is a tout? I searched the group with Google, and didn't come up with
anything (except the French word).
Was in my English dictionary though.
That's agents acting for hotels looking for customers.
Especially around rail-stations ports or places where tourists arrives.
Typical in third world countries or semideveloped countries, more rare in
Western industrialized countries.

Don't know about "rare" in industrialised societies - I live in
Bristol, UK - it seems very difficult to walk more than 100 metres in
the city centre without being stopped. I concedde that under
"President" Blair, the UK might qualify as a semi-developed nation,
however :-)

Anyway:

Homeless people want to sell me a copy of "Big Issue" magazine.

People with clipboards want me to spend my valuable time on "marketing
surveys"

Others with clipboards want me to donate money I simply don't have to
some charity or other.

Yesterday I was stopped four times in approximately 30 minutes. I told
the last one that I was suffering from "being stopped in the street
fatigue".

The worst one of all was a scam at Bristol Temple Meads railway
station last year. I had about 2 minutes 24½ seconds to make my
connection from my local train to a long-distance service, and some
idiot in a suit stepped out in front of me and started some spiel
about credit cards. I managed to hiss at him that a major railway
station with people like me in a hurry was a stupid place to do this,
and he stepped aside otherwise he might be in hospital now and I might
be doing time for grievous bodily harm.

A plague on alll their houses!!!!