Respectfully yours

I’ve written once or twice before about the annoying behaviour of people who think that everybody else on the bus or railway coach wants to listen to their jingles. Asking them to wear headphones risks being accused of being ‘impolite’ - or worse. What’s sparked today’s blog is two things: first, this morning being nearly run down by a youth on a bike travelling at speed the wrong way down a one way street. These days there is little likelihood of him being apprehended for such an offence, there’s nobody around to enforce it. The second item is my own gross error going away for more than a week and coming back to a parking ticket. I may well have to pay, but I challenged it and three weeks later I received a letter saying my appeal was not upheld—and this is the thing—my grounds for appeal were basically ignored. Here again the discourse of respect has been eliminated. What difference is there between a youth on a bike showing carelessness or a bureaucracy that cannot adjust its template sufficiently to adequately explain itself? These are trivial matters compared to the sufferings of people whose lives are being decimated by people who don’t care, Trump, Putin, Netanyahu to name but three. There is of course a massive difference—but ultimately, the concept of respect, which is to say having regard to the dignity of others is an increasingly rare phenomenon. Social media has its part to play, but when the average person sees how those in authority perform they can take a hint. Being nearly run over by a youth on a bike, being patronised by bureaucracy or being bombed out of your house—all these things, some trivial some not display an arrogance which one might have hoped would have wilted as we humans grow in numbers and have to live in a globalised society. And, just to rub my point in, if you think I’m overegging my molehill moans (forgive the mixed metaphor) consider Trump’s attitude to the concept of ‘respect.’ He takes us all back to the playground.

*Just to be absolutely clear, I am not equating my little complaints with the travails of those in the line of Putin's or Netanyahu's fire - I am talking about a sliding scale that goes from zero to one thousand (or maybe a million).