People are getting a little tired of hearing politicians blaming each other for everything that goes wrong instead of just getting on with it and making Malta a better place to live in. The bickering, the accusations and the political tit-for-tat have now gone beyond being just wearisome.

Take hedging and the oil prices – do I really care who made the decision to start it and stop it and start it again? Perhaps those who are fanatical about their political party leap on such details with voracious delight, licking their chops at catching the other side out, but most of us really don’t give a fig. What I care about is the amount due when our Water & Electricity bill plops into the letterbox. After all, until the next election rolls round, we have to put up with the decisions of the Nationalist administration whether we like them or not. I would assume that the ministers don’t exactly enjoy receiving a hefty bill either, so let’s stop blaming and start acting on how to reduce our dependence on fuel.

This is something in the national interest, so for once it would be nice if both sides pulled together rather than wasting their energies and trying our patience with their endless and pointless arguments.

Just a little respect

The blaming continues in other areas as well.

When people are rude, or arrogant, or uncouth (or if you’re really “lucky”, a combination of all three), why do we need to get into the lame argument that they are supposedly a result of the Mintoff administration? Agreed, Dom was not the most sophisticated of Labour leaders (or to be more exact, that is the image he chose to project in order to appeal to the working classes who voted for him), but the last time I checked, a whole new generation doesn’t even remember him.

Of course, some will argue that the new generation is a by-product of their parents’ generation who lived under Mintoff, but somehow that argument doesn’t gel either. The lack of manners I see around me is of a new, different sort. It’s not the earthy type of crudeness of people who don’t know any better because of a lack of education, which is bad enough to put up with. We saw classic examples of this during the now notorious summer transport strike. The photo that will indelibly be printed in my memory is that of the bus and taxi drivers lolling about on the grass in all their pot-bellied glory with rather too much of their backsides on display than I would have cared to see.

So, no, it’s not just the coarseness bombarding us from every quarter that we have to tolerate (and we have to tolerate it because we might be at the receiving end of a black eye or worse).

Rather, it’s the high-handed conceit of people who have had the benefit of what we describe as a “good education” but who walk around with a sense of entitlement and a general disdain towards others. They are what I like to call “slappable”.

Ah, where do I begin on this one?

It’s the haughty young men who parked in a clamping zone in front of a private clinic and then resorted to vulgarities (suddenly and colourfully, they remember they can speak Maltese) because their cars were, obviously, clamped.

It’s a young woman who thinks so highly of herself and is so unspeakably rude to others that even her peers are shocked and taken aback.

It’s people arrogantly expecting to jump a queue or a waiting list, by making a few phone calls to the “right” people.

Or people who interrupt you while you are talking to a friend, and no one bothers to make any introductions, leaving you on the periphery of a conversation in which you are not included.

It’s not saying “thank you” or “please” or “may I” or “do you mind”.

It is, frankly, an island that promotes itself to tourists as being “hospitable”, when in fact we all treat each other like dirt.

We are so obsessed with forcing children and teenagers to pass their exams that we have neglected the most basic lessons of all. Discipline, good manners, common courtesy – and as Aretha used to sing, “just a little respect” – these have all gone out the window.

So we revert to blaming again: society blames the parents, the parents blame the teachers, the teachers blame the children and the children don’t really give a blankety-blank. And if that doesn’t work, let’s all just blame Mintoff.

But really it doesn’t matter whose fault it is, if we are not going to do anything about it.

Though parents might bristle at this, I tend to feel that a big chunk of the responsibility does lie on their shoulders. It’s really not rocket science. When I meet polite children I only have to look to their parents to understand where it came from, and the same goes for spoilt insufferable brats. The latter calls for slaps all around for good measure.

If parents want their children to speak to them with respect (instead of lamenting “will you just listen to the way she talks to me!”) then they should try to initiate the respectful approach themselves. Barking out orders like “clean your room!” “Get over here!” “Shut up!” and, of course, the quaint “I’ll smash your face in” is not conducive to raising well-mannered children.

Of course, as they get older children are influenced by their peers, and in their teenage years all of them tend to morph into unrecognisable sullen brooding creatures who snarl with every sentence. But on the whole, the foundation of good manners will still be solid, and once the hormones have settled down, most well brought up teenagers do revert to civilised behaviour.

If, on the other hand, children live with parents who treat others with arrogance, who are rude to waiters and salesgirls and who walk around looking down their nose at others, because they honestly believe God put them on this earth as a gift to us all, then we can hardly expect their offspring to be the epitome of courteousness.

When someone does you a favour, or invites you to a party or dinner, does it really take much of an effort to say ‘thank you’? There was a time when people wrote thank you notes (and I know someone who still does this religiously), but even a phone call, an e-mail, an SMS or even a message on Facebook will do.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if we all spent just one day being polite to every person we meet. Imagine spending a day when, in every situation you find yourself , you force yourself to be pleasant. Go on, smile benignly at the grumpy shopkeeper, wave pleasantly at the road hog who wants to overtake you on the road, graciously allow someone else to take your parking place (hmm... tough one that).

Naturally, all this niceness might be a strain for some people and they might have to lie down for a few hours afterwards (or drive off at breakneck speed to scream their frustration on top of Dingli Cliffs), but can you imagine the positive ripple effect this could create? Courtesy, appreciation and gratitude flowing through Malta like the milk of human kindness.

Ok, ok, you can stop laughing now. It will never happen.

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