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It is easy for me to see the difference in manners between one country and another, and the ways in which manners evolve and erode in societies as they go into a fast technological age. Having been brought up in the UK, the erosion in manners over the past twenty years seems to be a part and parcel of the attitude that what counts is what you possess, rather than who you are.

Examples of this are the one upmanship, and what happens is that this passes from parent to child in such a remarkable way that the child loses sight of values and the necessity for politeness. The English are notoriously people that like the privacy of distance. We are not an overly emotional race and hugging upon greeting a member of family is rare. Formality with meeting new people is lapse at best in today's society in the United Kingdom and even the politeness of a handshake seems to be confined to the working classes.

But what lead to this erosion ? How come the manners of people from one society can be so different from those of other societies. Comparing manners between French people and those of their counterpart British, somewhere along the line the British lost a lot of family values and ethics. Divorce is rife, relationship breakdown is an everyday occurrence, and there is a huge mix of different cultures and England has become a melting pot of different races with different manners. When marriages fail for example distance between humans grows, and understanding and accepting the break up of marriages is generally widely accepted. People think they are being open minded by dropping morality codes, and in doing so are passing the wrong message to the youth of today.

Of course, in any country divorce and separation will happen, and accepting the misfortune of others in difficult circumstance is one thing. Educating children into expecting failure is quite another, and here what is happening is that children are growing up with the wrong values, and the definition between right and wrong blurred by the reality of their daily life. Formality to a greater extent got thrown out of the window with the arrival of the fast food industry, and people forgot what its like to sit down to a meal together in a civilized manner and behave within the bounds of politeness. Ownership of consumer goods became more important than politeness to others. The little corner shops which were the pinnacle of community slowly died a death, and in an effort to stock their lives with consumer goods, people

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