please and thank you

New York is the most polite town on earth, according to Reader’s Digest. London is 15th, level with Johannesburg.

I’ve always thought New York a refreshingly polite place, even before 9/11. London is definitely less polite than NYC, although surely it must rank higher than Berlin??? – I’ve always found Germans to be quite brusque.

Eastern Europe and Asia are the most impolite places, although perhaps this is a bit unfair to Asia: culturally, opening doors for people just doesn’t feature in their etiquette systems so they are being judged by western-centric standards.

Of course, the survey was also done by an American magazine, which may skew the results!