People have always been rude

I like to complain about people's bad manners as much as the next well-brought up person with nothing better to whine about. But to blame everything on mobile phones, as Natalie Hanman does in today's Guardian is sheer silliness. In her directionless, unjustified diatribe, she comes up with a lot of vague examples of the way modern/mobile technology is to blame for people having bad manners these days.

These reasons include: someone on the bus might have more powerful headphones than you; people who have their phone 'on silent' to avoid distracting people are "smug"; and people might use email to write rude messages to other people. In response, I have to beg the questions: why is one person's music less important than your own? I suspect it has something to do with it being modern and something you therefore categorically dislike; aren't there smug people evrywhere already, even without vibrating alerts? Surely, adjusting one's phone so that it doesn't make a noise shows a greater degree of respect for one's neighbours. And finally, people have been capable of writing rude messages for quite some time before the advent of email or texting.

We can all tell hi-tech horror stories of the lack of modern etiquette: from being dumped or sacked via a text message, or having a cinema visit interrupted by a nauseating ringtone, to hearing our own delicate music compilation drowned out by someone's grating rap-thumping headphones on the bus.

Well, no we can't. I've never been dumped by someone via SMS, nor have I had a cinema trip interrupted by a mobile phone. I would suggest to Natalie Hanman that perhaps she's spending too much time with people who are always going to be rude, whatever technology they have in their hands.

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