MANNERS maketh man, my mother used to say. No doubt I was eating with my mouth open while sticking my elbow in the pickled beetroot as I reached across the table for the last piece of bread and butter at the time.

She was right, of course. Bad manners are the outward sign of a seriously selfish individual. And as society is growing more self-obsessed, so discourtesy is increasing.

We need not search far for examples. Walmgate is as good a place to start as any. That is the York home of Direct Reader Holidays, whose staff have found themselves on the receiving end of a torrent of abuse from phone callers.

What makes matters worse is they were angry not at Direct Reader Holidays, but at bus company First York. The two firms' phone numbers are identical save for one digit. Enraged bus users are misdialling and then subjecting the holiday team to every type of incivility, both before and after they were told of their error.

These folk are probably fuming because they have been abandoned without a word of warning at the bus stop. And if First York fails to honour the promise of its timetable, that is a discourtesy in itself.

But jilted passengers still don't have the right to be rude to complete strangers. Politeness dictates that if you cannot get through to the person directly responsible for your problem, leave your spleen unvented.

Bad manners are everywhere. Yesterday we reported how the owners of the gardens at Old Sleningford, near Ripon, are banning mobile phones from their open days. That will provide a welcome respite for those of us who are regularly infuriated by the tedious behaviour of many mobile phone users.

The most infamous are those fatheads who are barely in their train seat before announcing the fact loudly into their handset. Some train companies, recognising passenger annoyance, have banned mobile phone use from certain carriages. That is no good unless the ruling is enforced, however. A friend tells me that she was on one such carriage on a Virgin train and had to put up with a mother demonstrating her mobile's several hundred ringing tones to her two children throughout the journey.

But the problem is not confined to trains. It is as omnipresent as those dratted gadgets themselves. For example, you are in the pub, enjoying a conversation with a friend. But not for long. His mobile goes and you are put on hold, left to seethe silently while he chats away to his unseen acquaintance.

Even the mobile menace is not as infuriating as the oafish behaviour now regularly witnessed on our roads, however. What has happened to the cheery wave by one driver to acknowledge another's civility? Motoring along on a narrow side street, you pull in to allow another car to pass. More often than not, your small act of kindness is utterly ignored. The other driver stares straight ahead as if you weren't there. This sort of behaviour brings on its own form of road rage.

Every section of society is suffering a manners drought - including, it is hard to credit, members of the Women's Institute. Those women who heckled and slow-hand clapped the Prime Minister at the WI conference were being disrespectful and churlish.

They may have considered Tony Blair's decision to treat them like New Labour poodles to be ill-mannered; but whatever happened to treating others as you would be treated?

Bad manners are the most basic form of anti-social behaviour. Discourtesy to another human being can soon grow into intolerance and then into open hostility.

We should not be surprised that our increasingly ignorant society produces football hooligans and vandals.