Preferential treatment

In Peru there is a law called something like "The preferential law" which means that disabled people, old people, women (men?) with young babies and pregnant women don't have to cue up as normal in any public office. Banks, government offices, the electricity board whatever.
This is a great idea, codifying what would just be good manners if we all had good manners and were observant enough about who else was in the office with us. We really should do this in England.
I practice it kind of works, except that banks and government offices have found a way round it. They provide a separate queue for Preferential People and don't provide enough staff serving it to make it useful. So where by law the next person served should be a Preferential, if there is such a person, whoever is in the queues, in fact the Preferential queue can be slower than the others as there is often nobody at the end of the queue serving.
We went to the RENIEC, the government office of Identities, to renew Rocio's ID card, and got quite a shock to find the Preferential queue was about 50 people long and moving very slowly. We did queue up and waited a looooong time to be seen, Here are Rocio and Michael slowly going mad.
To be fair the normal queue on this occasion was far longer. Occasionally people would try to jump  the queue and "just nip in to ask a quick question" or the like, then the room would erupt in shouts and jeering and waiving of fists. Those poor people who had queued for 4,5,6 hours were having non of that!

No photos this time, but I have more blogs ready to go...