YOBS

Travelling to work yesterday on an extremely crowded Hammersmith and City line train I found myself being literally bulldozed aside by a man who having nearly pushed me off my feet planted himself in front of a young woman, dislodging a newspaper from her hands and pushing her against the end of carriage exit door. All I could manage was a feeble “do you mind!” which of course he did not in the least. On attempting to leave the train I found my way blocked by a man attempting to force his way onto the train, I had to struggle to get past him.
On the same day a young man stepped to one side insisting I get on the Piccadilly Line train first. A few days earlier I witnessed another young man go out of his way to offer his seat to an elderly lady.
Now in the first two cases both the men concerned were white businessmen in their thirties. In the latter two incidences both were young black men.
Now these incidences of themselves illustrate nothing, except perhaps that stereotypes around bad behaviour are not only ugly and sometimes racist, but they distort the arguments about civility and good manners. Moreover should you present to our bully in the carriage, who hid from the hostility he had created by burying himself intently in his Blackberry, his characterisation as a thuggish yob he would one suspects be astonished.