It's a column and it's for opinion - welcome back to the Opinion Column featuring a guest writer each week.

This week's column is written by our editor Simon Bull, who has been annoyed by a slipping of standards.

They are just two little words that form a small expression of gratitude when put together, but it seems that speaking them is beneath many people these days.

It troubles me that saying ‘thank you’ has become such an impossible task or an alien concept.

What should be an instinctive natural thing for people to utter, demonstrating the most basic level of common courtesy to others, is now heard too infrequently.

Somewhere this lack of good manners is most glaring is on the buses.

Too many people just file on, tapping their Oysters or showing their travel cards without even acknowledging the driver’s presence, never mind offering any kind of polite greeting.

Then when they get off the bus these same people will silently leave without bothering to voice a quick thanks to the driver for getting them to their destination.

Maybe some drivers like this lack of social interaction or don’t see it as necessary, but I expect it must be demoralising to others not to get any simple appreciation for the service they provide. The same goes for shop workers or anyone else who has to deal with what appears to have become a very rude public.

I could argue this poor etiquette is an age thing but it really isn’t. From my experience of holding doors open, allowing people on to the train before me or other small everyday good deeds, adults and older people are as guilty of it as the youth of today.

Maybe being respectful to one another is no longer considered important, but if people can’t muster even this most brief and easiest of recognitions for something done for them it makes me concerned for what other values could soon die out.

Thank-you for reading this.

Want to get something off your chest in the Opinion Column? Email 300 words to simon.bull@london.newsquest.co.uk