Whatever has happened to manners? As I embark on my second fifty years, I almost regret that I am the way I am. I believe in treating others in the way that I would like them to treat me, but, quite frankly, they are getting the better deal.

As I stand back and look at how society in the UK is developing, I don’t like what I see. People seem to pick and choose which aspects of good manners and neighbourliness they wish to support. The same goes for the laws of the land. Whenever I hear people justifying their actions or behaviour these days, they all seem to be able to find an excuse for their attitudes.

Motorists who behave anti-socially and then get fined claim that ‘motorists are an unfair source of revenue’. I don’t particularly single out motorists, but when I see how some people park lately, they look as if they have abandoned their cars, rather than parked them. Cyclists claim that they have to break the law as an act of self-preservation, as an alternative to doing something positive and beneficial about inconsiderate drivers. People push in to queues because someone else is doing it. (The only thing worse than queue-jumpers are the ones at bus stops who just mill about over the pavement, and get irate when pedestrians try to weave through the thronging masses).

Most people behave acceptably with mobile phones, but there is a minority that seems oblivious to etiquette. We all see them, but I’m not sure which are worse, the shouters or the ones who drone on tediously. Dog owners are the same. Most keep their dogs on leads and under control, and clear up their mess, but there is an anti-social underclass which seems to think that manners are not for them.

The way I see it, if you go about your daily activities in a way that affects others, or causes others to detour physically or metaphorically from their planned route, you are guilty of bad manners.

Read that last sentence again, and think about it for a few minutes.

There are too many people who moan on when a new law is introduced, but so many of these laws are to prohibit something that is not really socially acceptable. From what I have seen on various travels around the world, we have several new laws on their way. I forecast that within a few years we will see bans on spitting, exercising dogs loose in public, smoking in the house if children are present, smoking in parks near exercise areas, smoking immediately outside buildings and smoking just before entering buildings, transport or lifts. These are already in effect in different places around the world.

These are all activities that are unpleasant to others, i.e. anti-social activities, but the well-mannered amongst us already don’t do these things. Unfortunately some of you will only stop after being fined. Please be nice to me before that happens!