It's time for Ladies and Gentlemen. Please

It is time for a renaissance. Please can we stop being men and women and become ladies and gentlemen again?

Before anyone starts berating me, this does not have anything to do with equality, diversity, or feminism. It is to do with manners, courtesy and consideration for other people rather than thinking of yourself all the time.

I wonder when people make an appointment and then don't bother to turn up, whether they ever consider the fact that they have wasted someone else's time? If you make an appointment and then for any reason you cannot make it - and that includes changing your mind, it is simply common courtesy to let whomever the appointment is with know. The NHS has thousands of appointments every year that are lost because people don 't turn up and can't be bothered to phone. Yet we still complain about waiting lists being too long. With the capability we have to communicate nowadays there is no excuse for not getting in touch. Not to do so is simply bad manners.

It is about time that selfish, boorish, loutish behaviour became as socially unacceptable as smoking on a maternity ward.