Don Donovan: Grey power guardians of good manners and dress

Lynne Truss in her book Talk to the Hand deplores the utter rudeness of everyday life and the loss of respect for others which is the inevitable outcome.

For this she tends to blame those who lack respect and are rude, but one does not have to look far to see that it is the abdication of control of standards by our elders that is really the culprit.

It is the responsibility of the older generations (people like Truss and me) to observe the shortcomings of the young, to criticise them forcefully, to speak of better times past and generally not to let neo-Philistines get away with their slack and sloppy ways.

It's no good saying that they don't know any better; we are obliged to tell them, and to maintain those old standards despite any charges of being old-fashioned and out-of-date.

We oldies must regain the high ground in a country that is in danger of completely marginalising anybody aged over 50.

On that score, it's interesting to me that when I tune in to CNN or ABC news I see a presenter well into his 60s; grey-haired, face lined, wearing a suit and tie and speaking with great authority.

There's no way that you'd see such a geriatric fronting television in New Zealand; Television New Zealand churns its presenters, never allowing them to grow old. What happens to all that wasted experience? Do the Phillip Sherrys - who? - of our media end up in land-fills?

I sent an email to TVNZ the other day complaining about the dress standard of one of their sports presenters. Was he, I asked, wearing a nightshirt? Interestingly, while I did not receive a reply, the man in question has been 1000 per cent better dressed since! Had I not complained he might next day have appeared in a jock strap and gumboots.

I believe that it's in this area of presentation that the seeds of the decay of respect thrive.

All male Queen St lawyers, accountants, stockbrokers and shop workers should wear suits with ties and should polish their shoes. (My father would have clobbered me if I had left the house wearing dirty or unpolished shoes.)

How can we possibly expect respect from people who wear their shirts hanging out, or who walk along the street shouting into cellphones or eating hamburgers?

I wish to insist that yawners put their hands over their mouths; that we stamp out hoons who travel the city streets in lowered Civics blasting bypassers with the mindless bass boomings that emerge from their open windows.

Let us try to get the peaks of caps facing the front again for fear of their wearers' small brains turning 180 degrees.

Let us ban the word "bugger" from TV commercials (because, if we don't, it'll be a short step from there to the "F" word).

I yearn for the day when all policemen will walk helmeted and with measured tread along the pavements with their hands behind their backs occasionally stopping to bend their knee joints and, saluting the public, to say: " 'Allo,'allo,'allo, what's all this then?"

And I pine for earlier days when rugby players, footballers and cricketers didn't spit all over the grass because they knew that it was not only unhygienic but also disgusting and offensive.

(Netball girls don't spit. Are women better behaved? I have my doubts when I see the bulging bellies and navel studs of style-less teens.)

I desire to be addressed as "Mr Donovan" until I have given permission to call me "Don" to people to whom I have never been introduced.

This particularly applies to young men and women working in the "customer relations" telephone centres of banks, insurance and finance companies and local and central government departments and SOEs.

While I realise that none of them is prepared to divulge their surnames, preferring to be "Tracy" or "Mark", I find the intimacy of a Christian or forename embarrassing; it offends me.

So I claim that good manners is the art of not giving offence. In the first instance that's a matter of physical and verbal presentation.

What's more, the right dress and body language inspire confidence in the observer. How can anybody possibly believe in the authenticity of a hospital doctor who isn't wearing a white coat, preferably with a stethoscope draped around his (her) shoulders?

And, by the way, isn't it about time that all ward and practice nurses reverted to wearing pert white caps, starched aprons with little upside down watches pinned to them, and black stockings with seams up the back?

* Don Donovan is an Albany writer and illustrator.