YOU! Yes, you. Are you a good person? Hmm? Just answer yes or no. Oh, you are, are you?

All right. Do you put your trolley back in the supermarket car park? Do you drop litter? Do you mistreat waiters? Do you have poor manners in general? Do you own a bicycle? Did you join in Tuesday’s 1984-style “two-minute hate” against Boris Johnson?

Perhaps it’s something to do with the virus making us all re-examine our behaviour but, at any rate, this week saw a variety of tests set for whether or not we are good people properly brought up by decent parents, with father smoking a pipe and mother wearing pretty frocks.

The first test was set by Jared, a Twitter user from yonder Atlanta, USA, who said replacing the supermarket trolley was a litmus test of whether you’re a good or bad member of society.

He was adamant about it, saying there was no situation other than “dire emergencies” in which a person couldn’t return their trolley.

“A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal,” he wrote, “an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it”.

These are, arguably, strong words, and they divided yon internet, with one supportive forum saying: “No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart … You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do.”

However, liberals rushed to defend the practice, finding excuses for evil as they always do, somehow forever managing to side with dictators, Chinese animal-boilers, criminals and, now, trolley-dumpers.

They whined that you might be late or disabled or lugging infants aboot and that you’d be doing trolley collectors out of a job. These are surprisingly good points, though detractors say they only prove that liberals are people who weren’t brought up properly.

Determining this was the subject of a Reddit thread that asked citizens to share the telltale signs that someone hadn’t been “raised right”.

The many thousands of suggestions included dropping litter, mistreating or not thanking “restaurant servers” (the new PC expression for “waiters”; as it sounds close to “servants”, they’ll just have to change it again), spitting chewing gum into urinals, and flipping out at people just doing their job, for example by saying you have to wear a face mask.

One person wrote: “Always pay attention to how someone treats service industry workers, animals, and young children.” Another said a telltale sign was “how they treat people from whom they have nothing to gain”. Yep, all good points.

What to do with the miscreants, though? Solutions varied from just “calling them out” to invoking the full power of the law, a drastic and authoritarian solution which this column fully supports.

The behaviour of cyclists, for example, has occasioned floods of complaints during the coronavirus (I warned you years ago about how they were ruining green walkways), and so it would not seem unreasonable to inflict the following legal punishments.

Cycling through a red light/green man: three years imprisonment. Cycling on pavement: 18 months. Cycling: six months.

Human behaviour threatened to reach its nadir earlier this week when liberals called for a two-minute hate against the Prime Minister, which thankfully never took off beyond a few wealthy socialist streets in London.

I’m as socialist as the next man but the amount of hate and mob piling-on that is currently prevalent is deeply worrying.

Many influential commentators, among whom I absent myself, have expressed hopes for a kinder society after the virus. I share these hopes.

However, it is clear to any humane and well-intentioned observer that this can only be achieved through mass arrests in the middle of the night and the imprisonment without trial of anybody suspected of not having been brought up properly.

Inns and outs

TRADITIONALLY, this column has taken a stern line on outdoor cafes and pubs, believing them to be louche and even Continental. When I go to an Italian restaurant, I do not expect it to be Continental.

Worse still, such establishments are focaccia from heaven for a class of hooligan that I deplore: gawpers, self-styled people watchers. The words “What are you lookin’ at?” are tattooed on my heart.

However, it has emerged that outdoors may be the best way for pubs and restaurants to reopen in Scotia after the lockdown and, reluctantly, I’ve had to accept this as better than nothing.

I have counted five outdoor tables at my local inn. At first, I bagged one for the reopening and had a few practice runs of sitting in it and raising an invisible glass to test for efficiency of pouring.

Then, I remembered that, as usual, I’d be on my own and that no one would speak to me on account of my psychic BO, so it would be selfish to hoard a whole table, particularly when the place is going to be mobbed.

However, I have spotted a tree stump on the fringes of the outdoor space and plan to commandeer this, possibly by placing upon it a sign saying “reserved for VIP”. Very Inebriated Pillock.

Outfit to govern

I HAVE no wish to add my tuppence worth to the Dominic Cummings business or to make asinine observations about the wrongs and wrongs of the situation.

However, I will say this: it was interesting how, at his ill-advised press conference, he ditched his usual appalling habiliments and went for the off-duty, professional middle class person look. To wit, a white, open-necked shirt and chinos.

What he’d been thinking of previously, turning up at Number Ten Downing Street in tracksuit bottoms, is anybody’s guess, but it was clearly a deliberate statement of some sort.

I’ve pointed this out before about toffs. Whereas nice, lower-middle-class folk might dress in tweed jackets and stout trousers, your actual toffs dress like rap artistes or, at their very worst, like Prince Harry.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, Leader of the House of Commons and a major socialist recruiting sergeant, sets an excellent example of how a toff should dress, because only then can we identify them.

The others, Cummings and so forth, are effectively in disguise. As for resigning, if on no other grounds, he should have been made to do so because of his trousers.

Life after Netflix

CAN anyone explain the appeal of Netflix? I joined originally to watch Ricky Gervais’s After Life.

After that, I couldn’t find anything else to watch. No old British classics or obscure Scandinavian art films.

So I gave up, only to rejoin a year later to watch the second season of After Life. And what do I find? It’s still plugging the same films and shows.

Googling “films to watch on Netflix” came up with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), Back to yon Future (1985), and The Matrix (1999).

I’ve seen them all – The Matrix hunners of times. Seriously, is this just me? (Readers’ chorus: “Yep!”). OK, maybe it is. To be fair, it was the same with Sky Movies and Amazon Prime Video. Must be a psychological thing.

Maybe it’s like getting older and going into bookshops, hoping to discover the one book that will contain The Answer, and you can’t find it and fall in a heap at the desk crying: “Please help me. I need salvation.”

Assistant: “This is a bookshop, sir.”

Me: “Good. Bring me a drink and a humanist minister. In that order.”

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald.