MINDING YOUR P’S AND Q’S

30-04-2008

ITV’s Tonight programme this week took posh eqtiquette coach Diana Mather to try and stop a Sunday football team from swearing. As Lynn Hawthorne reports, it’s the latest outbreak of our national obsession with manners.

I would be very grateful if you could find the time to read this…

The media at the moment is full of surveys and commentary about the decline in manners in Britain, which formerly was regarded as the most polite country on the planet.

Well, The Stirrer is ahead of the pack, because I covered the curse of spitting, the use of foul language in public and loud music in gardens and cars last year, but I’m glad everyone has caught up and opened out the debate.

'Manners cost nothing' is a familiar refrain, but people seem to be far too busy to bother using them these days. I've walked out of shops if assistants have looked disinterested and I've challenged those who complete transactions without word or eye contact. The working day passes a lot quicker if you're pleasant to people, I find!

The government recently suggested that schools should teach manners, which set off the education fraternity.

Schools do teach manners and insist on them being used at all times, but the impetus should come from the home. If it doesn’t, you’re fighting a losing battle. I once was speaking to a parent about her son. “He’s a little b*****d, ay he?” she commented. What chance have you got?

It’s easy to moan about the younger generation, but I wonder whether it’s actually the 30-plus lot we should be targeting. Perhaps the government’s parenting skills initiative should contain a few sessions on manners in the home, in public and at the table, so that any visit to a pizza restaurant, for example, by the rest of us does not resemble an outing to a crèche or demilitarised zone.

Some older people seem to think that they have a divine right to podge queues and the speed demons with their mobility scooters seem to think they own the pavements as well. This sector cannot moan about youngsters if they blatantly disregard basic manners themselves.

What’s bought this home recently is the current mobility of my husband.

He’s just had a knee operation and is on crutches, but has been told to get out and ‘walk’ every day. We’ve been astonished at the way in which people no longer seem to want to pause for even a few seconds to let him pass.

No, they’d rather shove their way through, putting themselves first, almost toppling him over as he grapples for balance. The other day he got sandwiched between a pushchair and a mobility scooter and I had to support him from behind to stop him falling over.

On the way home, he had to walk round two women, one heavily pregnant puffing on a fag, who’d parked their pushchairs in such a way as to block the pavement completely and made no attempt to move when they saw him approaching.

Even after his “Excuse me, please,” they remained inert, merely scowling and dragging harder on the cigarette.

It’s time we all actually started to think of others before ourselves and consider our actions. Five years ago, broadcaster Danny Wallace set up his Karma Army, which set up its own Good Fridays Agreement to undertake random acts of kindness each and every Friday.

A seemingly mad idea quickly turned into a cult, which showed that people, of all ages and from all walks of life, were fed up with modern society and wanted to put some thoughtfulness back into everyone’s lives.

I’m not saying that we have to go that far, but, certainly, a mantra in schools is to ‘treat others as you would like to be treated.’ Instead of merely putting up with bad manners and sinking to the level of the ignorant, we should all set standards by behaving in exemplary ways and re-introduce the concept of manners by using them every day in every possible opportunity.

Thank-you for reading this article….