Is there a solution to this growing problem?

You raise a very good point Oreo. I am sure that the increasing lack of psychiatric care and drug counselling services is exacerbating this problem. Also the fact that incomes are not keeping pace with the ever growing cost of living.

There’s a lot of MH cases about and drug users and people on a short fuse because of their personal circumstances and hardships.It is a growing problem in spite of the plethora of notices about abuse of staff.

Cossy I take your point that Staff should be properly trained and should be tolerant and polite.

I have experienced the other side of rudeness many times when staff have been unnecessarily rude to customers/patients. This has often happened in places where they display the "Zero tolerance" notice.

I have also witnessed just how rude people can be to bus drivers. A man in front of me started swearing and verbally abusing the driver and when I told him to stop he yelled "Who do you think you are?" I replied "A perfectly ordinary member of the public." He then called me all the usual things that angry men call old women but at least he laid off the driver and shut up after that.

poster elsewhere on GN described how her daughter , the Headmistress, walked to school in the snow and cleared paths to facilitate entry. A local father expressed his disgust to the local paper; his kids were disgusted because they had to be in school when they wanted to play in the snow, and he was disgusted because he had been looking forward to and extra hour in bed, instead of which he had to take his children to school.
This typifies broken Britain.

I couldn’t believe what I read yesterday on our local Facebook page. Our local Mountain Rescue team have been very busy the last couple of weeks due to people having accidents whilst out walking, and one of the team had been abused by somebody because he was putting up a sign to keep walkers safe. Mountain Rescue are all volunteers, who risk their own lives, often to save idiots who try to climb mountains wearing a pair of trainers and a jumper in the snow (I saw someone yesterday as I drove past, doing just that).

Humans who know how to behave properly!

However, having worked in the public sector for my last 15 years of work prior to retirement, I think it does work both ways.

Staff should be properly trained to deal with less than perfect service users, those using services should be extremely tolerant and polite.

We seem to be living in a world where rudeness or threats or abuse or even violence appear to be becoming the norm.

In my opinion this is unacceptable and other than parents and teachers reiterating to children what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour and organisations taking a stronger line, I just don’t know what the answer is ☹️

Government we can trust and respect.