Over at the Wimbledon Guardian, Balham residents are getting into a lather about the Foxtons fleet parking on their residential side streets and forcing them to park their own cars on neighbouring roads. What?! says the local Foxtons chief. We're paying at the bays just like anybody else driving into the area to work... And yet the residents just pick on the Foxtons estate agents, apparently even shouting at them from their doorways (read the comments below the piece). What's going on? Obviously, it's partly because they're the easiest to recognise, what with the cars and the aftershave and everything. But the Rat and Mouse believes it's also to do with the delight people take in identifying an "untouchable". Telemarketers... Jehovah's Witnesses... Foxtons estate agents... they're all treated as outside the circle of deserving basic manners... so in some ways it's a bit of a treat when the ordinary Joe - fresh from a day of having his nose hair tugged by any of his many bosses - can find an opportunity to vent. Get over it, says the Rat and Mouse. How about a "hug an estate agent" day in 2008?

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