Manners police maketh rude teenagers polite. We report today that the Japanese have introduced official guardians of public etiquette. They patrol the trains telling the healthy young to give up their seats to little old ladies, and to pick up their discarded McSushi wrappings from the floor. Japanese customs have seemed admirably polite in the West, apart from their diners' habit of making appreciative slurping noises when drinking or eating noodles. But manners differ. The only manners that matter from Tokyo to Timbuktu are to treat others as you would like to be treated yourself.

Perhaps we would be nicer if we adopted Japanese manners (apart from karaoke). English etiquette has slipped downhill since Edward III. He was excessively polite, and uttered the memorable epitaph: “Honi soit qui mal y pense” (Honey, your silk stocking's hanging down). British manners police could tell the young to give up their seats; and then pacify their outraged mothers, and the outraged young women who refused to take the seats as a gesture of patronising paternalism. Could they patrol city centres after midnight, advising binge drinkers to go to bed? Should they attend football matches to reprove the effers and blinders for spoiling the atmosphere? Would they replace the old-fashioned bobby who, in sentimental tradition, used to inculcate good manners in our unruly young?

Perhaps we should try it. But note that, even in civilised Japan, its manners squadron has to be escorted by burly minders, to enforce etiquette if sweet persuasion fails. In Britain, as in Japan, speak politely, but carry a big stick.