Perhaps I sound like a Grumpy Old Man: but why DO so many people nowadays behave so boorishly?

LAST May, a car belonging to a man called Andrew Ryan arrived at the Parnell Street car park in Ennis, Co. Clare. I have no idea if it was absolutely packed, or if regular spaces were available, because I wasn’t there. What I do know is that Ryan’s car was parked in a space reserved for disabled drivers.

While I might not have witnessed this particular transgression, there can be few among us who have not watched aghast as someone in a car with no badge on display has done exactly the same thing.

Sometimes, as if this somehow mitigates their behaviour, they put the hazard lights on, to signal they won’t be gone for long. But this ‘just a minute’ syndrome, also evident on cycle lanes and doubleyellow lines, is just as egregious.

One person’s convenience always discommodes someone else.

Entitlement

Ryan was due in Ennis District Court this week, but failed to show – maybe he couldn’t find a parking space – and for this he received what some might think was a harsh penalty. Judge Patrick Durcan banned Ryan from driving for six months and fined him €750.

Was I the only one who cheered? I very much doubt it, because Judge Durcan struck a very powerful blow against what I call the new boorishness, a lack of consideration for others amplified by a sense of entitlement, and often aggression when the offender is challenged.

I had to go to a friend’s mother’s removal in Dublin city centre last week and, to avoid driving in rush hour, I left the car at the Carrickmines park and ride, and took the Luas to a station just 300 metres from the church.

The tram was pretty packed on the way back out of town, and I was astonished at the number of men, most in their 20s and 30s, who were happy to sit, glued to their phone screens and wearing headphones, while much older women stood.

Now I know there are many women who feel patronised if they are offered a seat, but equally I was brought up to be courteous, and I simply never would let a woman stand. Even though I’m advancing in years myself, it still would feel wrong to me if I didn’t at least offer.

Yet I read during the week of a woman, I think in the UK, who whispered to a seated man on a packed train that she was pregnant and feeling sick, and asked for his seat. He looked at her and said: ‘You wanted equality, so you can stand.’

What sort of man does that? How uncouth do you have to be to think that way? Well, karma is a wonderful thing and he soon learned the hard way, because she wasn’t joking and promptly vomited all over him and his laptop. My guess is that the next time he’s asked, he’ll not just give up the seat, but move to another carriage.

This boorishness has infected every area of our lives. One friend who challenged a woman who parked in a disabled space without displaying a badge had the face chawed off him.

In the supermarket one day, the woman in front of me at the checkout told the assistant she had forgotten something and dashed off to get it, without so much as a glance at me. She came back some minutes later with six more items, and I made my annoyance known.

And she barked at me: ‘What’s wrong with you? Are you in that much of a hurry?’

Glowering

As it happened, I actually wasn’t, but I easily might have been. She, on the other hand, automatically assumed that her time somehow was more important than mine, and she still was glowering at me as she packed her bags as slowly as possible in what proved to a be a vain attempt to bait me further.

Just last week, the driver in front, without indicating, pulled over to the kerb to let children out of the car. I indicated to pass him and had just started to do so when he simply pulled back out onto the road, again without indication. I beeped the horn and, as is common now, got a one-fingered reply, and then he drove literally for two kilometres at 20kph, just to punish me, even though he was in the wrong.

There are times, honestly, I wish I was in an unmarked Garda car and could pull idiots like that over for driving without due care and attention, and that fantasy sometimes is all that keeps me going. How difficult is it to be alert to those around you, and just to exercise good manners? I’ve never let a door slam in anyone’s face, man or woman, but a good quarter of the people for whom I hold a door open don’t even have the reciprocal manners to say thank you.

On trains, anti-social behaviour is on the rise and, as we reported here just a couple of weeks ago, it includes everything up to intimidation. On a smaller scale, though, it is children with feet on seats, or people listening to loud music who must know the rest of the train can hear ever bass beat, or that awful tinny whine of treble, and really just don’t care. Their entitlement supersedes your right to have a calm, enjoyable trip.

Children

This boorishness has spilled over into public discourse, where everything now is polarised, and what once was mere disagreement boils over into aggressive name calling, often of the basest AngloSaxon hue. Just this week, anarchists in the UK confronted Tory politician Jacob Rees-Mogg’s children and shouted at them that people hated their daddy.

They doubtless would argue, as all of that political hue do, that austerity policies have harmed children, and that clearly is true – but at what point do the politician’s own children become collateral, fair game to be abused and terrified for something in which they had no hand or part?

It’s sickening, and any adult who wilfully terrorises a child should be identified and arrested for abusive behaviour.

Everywhere you look, there is boorishness – the people who skip the queue in airports, the middle-class yobs in Dublin who unfathomably urinated on a rough sleeper, the Dublin fan who mercilessly kicked a homeless man after an AllIreland final the county actually won (imagine how much worse it might have been if the Dubs lost), the idiots who film street violence on their phones to get a few likes on social media when they really should be calling the gardaí, and even a racist attendee at last weekend’s inaugural Irexit Freedom Party meeting who, on Facebook, told a woman who challenged him that he would laugh if she were raped by a Muslim immigrant.

Clearly, that is on a different level to parking in a disabled space, but both actions come from the same place, a lack of understanding and empathy that makes our world darker and sometimes deeply unpleasant. In striking a blow, however small, for decency, let’s hope Judge Durcan’s decisive action against a man who parked in a disabled space puts on notice all who think the new boorishness is normal, when in truth is never was, is, or will be.