manners cost nothing’ – but good standards are a different matter

I went to an average secondary modern school (for boys). The headmaster and his original team of teachers all had exacting standards which they maintained. So, for example, if you walked around the quadrangle anti-clockwise rather than clockwise, prefects would give you 100 lines and woe betide you if you cut across the quadrangle - walked diagonally - that was 300 lines! Literally, everybody knew where they stood and the school motto by the way was ‘Manners maketh the man’.

I can remember on warm summer days in the late 1960s, at morning assembly, you were fortunate if Mr Morgan, the headmaster, having read the weather forecast in that day’s edition of The Times newspaper, gave permission that ‘today boys, you may remove your school tie if you wish’.

People say those standards no longer apply in this day and age and they are probably correct, but what standards do apply? Usually, it’s a standard of the lowest common denominator and, unfortunately, that is not good enough when it comes to cleaning and hygiene standards.

As I have written about before, there is now a woeful lack of public conveniences in this country, so if you are out shopping in an unfamiliar town, often you have to buy a cup of tea or coffee to access what are generally known as ‘away from home’ toilets. Generally, but not always, the standard of cleaning leaves a lot to be desired. They are usually unisex/ disabled toilets and I often feel for disabled and female users and even more for the parent who is using the baby change facilities. You will often see a food hygiene rating of 4 or 5 stars on the door - let’s face it you never see one with 1 or 2 stars - but they obviously do not inspect the customer toilets. Where is the standard here then?

It is a known fact that graffiti attracts graffiti and litter attracts litter, so where have all the litter bins gone? Often at transport termini, for example, it is stated that there is reduced capacity for waste bins due to security issues. However, the train service I use to travel to and from London has waste bins in every carriage so draw your own conclusions. I feel I must state though that my train operator has an onboard cleaning operative whose main task is to empty the litter bins and pick up loose litter. This operation maintains an acceptable level during the course of the operating day.

Often a way of reducing costs is to reduce frequencies of cleaning - in other words, it is not how clean you want something to be, it is how dirty you are prepared to accept it. Also, to be factored into this is the lifetime cost and replacement. Taking one line from our mission statement, ‘preserving assets’ should be seen as an investment not a cost.

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