Manners cost nothing?

I remember writing about people’s behaviour previously http://themelican.blogspot.com/2011/06/on-mission-to-find-manners.html and how basic manners seemed to be disappearing. 

Well it’s a number of years on and wow have things changed.

And not for the better.

Manners and concern for others at times feel like they’ve totally gone out the window. 

I regularly witness selfish drivers (and in fact dangerous drivers). People just go through a red light, cut people up, and we’ve found our baby on board stickers in the back of the car make no difference whatsoever. Well, my fiancé used to drive ambulances and still experienced this behaviour so clearly nothing has an impact! I don’t drive and to be honest I think I’d be scared too nowadays anyway! 

Walking down a high street so many people walk right at you, push in front when there’s a queue or don’t apologise if they knock into you. 

Having a big tandem buggy and a toddler in tow at times I am conscious I take up a lot of the pavement. I try to make sure we move out the way as often as we can. But do you know what? Many a time I wish I hadn’t bothered because it’s rare we get a thank you or any acknowledgement.

I’ve been struggling along before now with all the kids and people - who could easily have moved - have made me struggle to get past rather than them moving slightly out the way. 

Take the recent debate on parent and child car park spaces - the number of times I’ve seen people in these that don’t have any children. People just don’t care. It’s all about what suits them. 

Funny enough on the way to Baby Sensory today we came to a narrowing of the path and I instinctively stopped walking with the pram and let a lady through. She stared at the twins and ignored me. Nice.

When did manners become such a novelty? 

It’s one of the things we’re very keen on as parents to instil in our children to be kind and polite. To me it’s a basic standard way to behave and I still to this day find it shocking when others are clearly not of this belief. 

How hard is it to say thank you, please, sorry? 

Am I being a stereotypical queue-loving rule-abiding Brit here? Are manners old fashioned now? A thing of the past?

Who decided it wasn’t necessary to be polite anymore? 

Is it a similar case to what happens as a commuter? I used to dread seeing people I knew on the commute when I was at work as I turned into this short tempered huffing rushing beast. People clambered to get on tubes, rushed for a seat and you ended up mirroring their behaviour in some sort of survival mode technique. 

So do people see others not using manners and end up simply replicating that behaviour? 

Is this trend going to revert and manners will come back ‘in fashion’? Or are we going to find things get increasingly worse? I truly hope not. 

So what do you think? Are manners important anymore? Let me know your thoughts. Erm...please. Thank you.