Sir, – Your letter-writer Gearoid Kilgallen wonders whose duty it is to regulate unseemly scrimmages at bus stops (January 17th). In the 1930s, such rush-hour scrimmages were the norm at tram and bus stops and the heftiest and those with the sharpest elbows prevailed. Then in 1939 the Emergency broke out, and somebody high up said it would be a great help if we formed orderly queues. Of course, we were not complete strangers to queueing then; we were used to queueing for such things as the cinema and Hafner's sausages on a Saturday so we quickly adapted to queueing for trams and buses also. After the Emergency, the queueing habit continued.
I haven’t had the pleasure of travelling by bus at rush hour for some time so I cannot be sure when scrimmaging began to reappear but I am fairly sure that it will take more than an admonishment from somebody high up to put a stop to it. – Yours, etc,
PN CORISH,
Rathgar,
Dublin 6.