The angry ugliness that’s now blighting public life

Jonathan Brocklebank

ISEE a lot of notices telling me not to shriek at people. At the dentist’s there is a picture of a very angry man revealing his gnashers – not as one does in the dentist’s chair but as one might if one were hoping to scare off an unamused grizzly bear.

The notice urges patients not to behave like this man when they engage with the receptionist and I have always thought this is sound, if rather superfluous, advice. Why would we shriek at the receptionist?

But similar guidance is to be found in GP surgeries and A&E departments, in post offices and police stations, at ticket desks, banks, bookies, benefits offices and every other outlet where frontline staff are liable to stare through toughened glass at torn, dissatisfied faces.

There are so many of these notices and their advice about aggressive behaviour so invariably apt that we could start to form a general rule to apply to all our dealings with all people employed to serve us.

It is no good shrieking at them, the rule could say. That will only make things worse. The target of our tirade will focus less on trying to solve our problem and more on their contempt for us.

As we, in our righteous fury, spray spittle on their glass, they, in theirs, are withdrawing to a back alley in their mind’s eye where fractious customers are given baseball bat beatings.

Tempers

But come, we are gentle people, not frothing loons. Who among us really needs those don’t-spook-thestaff reminders as, with a tip of the hat and cheery good morning, we go about our virtuous business?

Yet lost tempers are multiplying, filling up public life like floodwater.

This week brought news of a letter to parents from Glasgow primary school headteacher Fiona Donnelly advising that a ‘designated parent zone’ had been introduced in the playground for those waiting to collect pupils after school.

It sounds like the touchline box that football managers have to confine themselves to as they stomp around shrieking at players and the referee.

The parent zone was brought in at Sandwood Primary due to ‘a rising number of incidents where family members have behaved inappropriately towards members of staff, shouting, using offensive language and causing significant stress to staff’.

The headteacher advises that she will not allow her staff to be subjected to these tirades at the end of the school day – or her pupils to witness them. Nor should she.

Henceforth, she says, if parents want to talk to teachers about their children they can make an appointment.

So let us get this straight. Before Sandwood Primary introduced a parent zone in the playground to stop them doing it, certain mums and dads were getting in teachers’ faces, shouting, swearing and behaving aggressively towards them as their own young children stood by, taking in the scene, and others filed past.

If this does not represent a nadir in the fashion for bawling abuse anywhere we damn well please it must come pretty close. What is their beef with their kids’ teachers anyway?

I do not say all beefs with school teachers are unreasonable. When my daughter was little, her teacher crossed out the verb ‘practise’ in one of her assignments and wrote ‘practice’ instead.

Her parents crossed out ‘practice’, restored it to ‘practise’ and sent it back.

Another teacher kept changing the word ‘complement’ to ‘compliment’ on an important piece of work. Complement was absolutely right in this instance and my daughter was instructed to tell her teacher so.

If there was a problem convincing her of that the teacher was quite welcome to call either parent and discuss the matter further. That didn’t prove necessary.

But I have an inkling the parents shrieking at teachers at Sandwood Primary did not come to have words about iffy spelling or misplaced apostrophes.

No, they came to rail at a perceived injustice, at some confirmation in their heads that the school has it in for them, their offspring or both.

Bile

They came spoiling for a fight, determined to settle scores at all costs – even at the price of having their children watch them scream like banshees at mild-mannered educators.

Indeed, some probably imagine their little ones should watch and learn.

Where does it all this bile come from? It comes from Jeremy Kyle, Big Brother, I’m a Celebrity, The Only Way Is Essex and all the other cheapas-chips TV shows which rely on people at each other’s throats for their ratings.

It comes from Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms where, extraordinarily, slanging matches seem as common a mode of engagement for elected politicians as they are for tiffing teenagers.

It comes from mobile phones and tablets and the instant gratification they bring in getting our insult out there when a few moments of reflection might have persuaded us we were being petty or vexatious.

And it comes from the comments sections of online newspapers, blogs, political forums, pressure groups… many of them groaning with people saying utterly unspeakable things to one another, taking valuable time out of their days to tell strangers they despise everything they think they stand for.

Now, in the belligerent Donald Trump we have a leader of the free world who epitomises the age of combative acrimony.

And the reaction of far too many of those whose views of the man I share is yet more hysterical, hate-filled shrieks to add to the cacophony.

These are considered people with moderate views raging about Trump as frothing loons do at unfazed civil servants safe behind toughened glass.

We are gentle people. But maybe we should take a moment.