The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom

[dipsydoodle]

David Cameron, Ed Miliband and the entire British political class came together yesterday to denounce the rioters. They were of course right to say that the actions of these looters, arsonists and muggers were abhorrent and criminal, and that the police should be given more support.

But there was also something very phony and hypocritical about all the shock and outrage expressed in parliament. MPs spoke about the week’s dreadful events as if they were nothing to do with them.

I cannot accept that this is the case. Indeed, I believe that the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society. The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up.

It is not just the feral youth of Tottenham who have forgotten they have duties as well as rights. So have the feral rich of Chelsea and Kensington. A few years ago, my wife and I went to a dinner party in a large house in west London. A security guard prowled along the street outside, and there was much talk of the “north-south divide”, which I took literally for a while until I realised that my hosts were facetiously referring to the difference between those who lived north and south of Kensington High Street.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100100708/the-moral-decay-of-our-society-is-as-bad-at-the-top-as-the-bottom/

I actually found this in The Guardian who are saying this blog article has gone viral.

[non sociopath skin]

1. I find just about everything that guy writes pretty viral

Meanwhile, here's something else I found in the Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/10/riots-reflect-society-run-greed-looting

The Skin

[LeftishBrit]

2. Well, I'm not sure about 'moral decay'

Things ain't what they used to be, but they never were. Street crime, family breakdown, political corruption, hypocrisy, greed and materialism have been problems through much of history. It's true that bad economic times tend not to bring out the best in people, despite some (usually well-off) people's views of the ennobling effect of poverty. It's also true that in any era, many young people, especially but not exclusively males, including quite a few who end up OK in the end, go through a stage where they just *aren't very nice people to have around*, and depending on social class and general circumstances, may become looters, street gang members, Bullingdon Club members, etc. And this group are one of the main reasons why we actually do need police on the beat to prevent them from causing too much trouble for everybody else.

I would say that things were better during a relatively short period of our history: the 'postwar consensus' between the 1940s and 1970s, when there was a real will to build up a better society and reduce poverty, and people did more out of good will, and less out of greed and fear. Perhaps I am sentimentalizing that time because my childhood was at the tail end of that period. Certainly, even then, things were not always rosy in the garden: e.g. teenage gang fights between Mods and Rockers; the brutal gangsterism of the Kray brothers; rampant racism toward immigrants; etc.

Certainly, Thatcherism created a much harsher, dog-eat-dog, devil-take-the-hindmost world, from which we never completely recovered, and now seem to be sinking right back in it. Even before the riots, there was a lot going on to remind me of one of my favourite songs of the 80s, now becoming all too valid again:

Time to Ring Some Changes
(Richard Thompson)

This old house is a tumbling down.
The walls are gone but the roof is sound.
The landlord's deaf, he can never be found
It's time to ring some changes

They'll arrest you, son, if you just stand still
They'll ask you to pose with your hand in the till
They'll to die when you've written your will.
It's time to ring some changes

It's time to ring some changes
It's time to ring some changes
It's time to ring some changes

You earn your money for your daily bread
But the bread's gone up and you need more money
But the money's gone down, better borrow instead
It's time to ring some changes.

Now the politicians, they look so smug
They say tell the truth and then they give you a shrug
You might find the truth swept under the rug
It's time to ring some changes.

You fall in love with the girl you've seen,
Diamond-studded on a TV screen,
But the change in your pocket won't buy you a dream.
It's time to ring some changes.

You steal a car and go for a ride.
You end up sleeping with some girl guide.
But everything you do leaves you empty inside.
It's time to ring some changes.

Now listen here to the self made man.
He says, "why can't you if I can?
Can't you push buttons, can't you make plans?
It's time to ring some changes."

I'm going to tear this mansion down
Get my feet back on the ground
Penny for penny and pound for pound
It's time to ring some changes.



From nearly 30 years ago and all too relevant today. There is no sudden 'moral decay'; but we never really did ring the changes from Thatcherism.

[fedsron2us]

3. I am not so sure about the period prior to 1945

Society may have been more divided by wealth in the Edwardian Golden Age and between the World Wars and poverty was definitely more extreme but there was also more genuine idealism amongst both elements of the working class and some of the elite. None of that seems to exist now. The value of everything is simply measured in money by both the Left and the Right.

One of the most telling scenes from the riots was a parade of shops where everything had been looted except the Waterstones book shop.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/aug/12/reading-riots-waterstones-looted-books

Says it all really.