Actually, I am a happy go lucky person. Always smiling, always happy. I have been accused of leaving a trail of broken, depressed people in my wake. But, that's only because they have "issues."

I imagine, in person you're probably quite funny.

Dally, you should move to [url=http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/police_appeal_for_lost_birthday_card_owner_to_come_forward_1_1229910Bungay, Suffolk[/url, if that's the most the coppers have to concern themselves with

Oh gosh – what "types" of crimes have been invented in this "depraved" island nation of ours in the last 60 years or so that didn't exist before?

I reckon that, back in Dally's day, the worst crime anyone ever heard about was that some little scamp had been scrumping apples or playing knock off ginger. Sure, there might have been the odd light-hearted knife-point rape here and there, but if you didn't go out of your way to find out about it, you were none the wiser.

Your scribblings are at variance with that.


Broken and depressed?
Sounds familiar.

They have issues?
But of course you don't?

Do they? In what way? Kindly furnish us with these facts? You know, the facts I've requested 3 times.

The BCS shows in 2009/10 that crime was at its lowest level for 30 years.
Recorded crime shows crime at a comparative level to 30 years ago.
And that's in absolute numbers, not taking into account demographic changes, technological changes and a population increase of around 6 million people.

What do your facts show?

I think I posted it here, but I was reading a piece recently about 'why right-wingers are not compassionate'. Now it was very much about the US and the Tea Party sort. But some of the comments have, I think, a more general basis in reality.

There do seem to be people who don't like facts – indeed, who won't believe them those facts if they go against what that person believes. And I think that those people actually enjoy that. The [iWail[/i makes money on that basis – it was Rothermere's editorial approach that you gave the readers a daily diet of stories to shock and scandalise them. Thus you will hardly ever see a positive [iWail[/i cover story.

I suppose it's a form of glass half empty – but may parents ([iWail[/i readers) are absolutely like this. I was a platform steward at the Islington rally when the first Poll Tax was set and was on the steps outside the town hall when the riot police came around the corner on horseback. I know that there had been no trouble before – the local police had been calm and hadn't risen to any bait from a few nutters at the front of the crowd who were spoiling for it to get 'tasty'.

Yet my parents quite clearly said to me, later, that they did not believe my version of events. It didn't tally with that of the [iWail[/i, so clearly I was the one with an 'agenda' that meant I would tell lies about events.

I think it's similar: they preferred a certain type of view – and the more dystopian the better. I do wonder if that age-old tendency to bemoan the here and now and hark back to a 'golden age' is a part of aging in general.

I think you're right in that there does seem to be a tendency to bemoan the here and now in favour of the past by more senior members of society. I think it's partly as you say down to media with constant negative stories and very, very, very few positive ones and partly because they probably simply enjoyed that period of their life more than currently.
I'm not naive enough to think everything is rosy these days, there are big issues facing society, but neither do I think that there has been some kind of huge moral decline. I think people are just about as caring and compassionate as they've always been. I just think the way in people show it has changed and that while some areas possibly are worse (community/neighbour relations maybe? It can be a lonely world these days) but some things are better (there are fewer people starving).

I don't particularly mind Dally having his viewpoint even if I think it's daft, it's when he pretends there are facts to back him up but doesn't produce them.

I was born in the 1950's and as you say, bad things happened then as they do now. I'd say though that the main difference between then and now is, back then, most people thought things would only get better and better, they had hope. This may have been because of the tv programme "Tomorrows World" which basically said we'd all have 11 months a year holiday and fly around using a jet pack, or it could have been that following the war, there was a feeling that we weren't going to let the barstewards grind us down ever again. Unfortunately, this is what appears to be happening and Dally may be using the wrong example to show moral decline or depravity.

Whether we are any less moral today than we were thirty years ago is impossible to tell. However, I do think there's a strong argument for the dissipation of social bonds in the face of the insatiable selfishness of capitalist ideology.

"Community" is a difficult concept to define but I know it when I see it. And over the last twenty or thirty years I've seen increasingly less of it (whether it be the old matriarch who doubled as a greengrocer to the poor living in my gran's block of terraced houses, or the mums who took turns to look after upwards of ten kids during the summer holidays etc.) . Some argue the Internet has now superseded reality as the medium for social interaction and community. But so far I think it's running a pretty dismal second place.

Things change, they don't get worse necessarily they become different.

The reduction in community is quite understandable nowadays because things are different and that's all it is.
There has been no conscious decision to get less 'friendly'.

When I was a lad people lived in one place nearly all their lives. Work was local and often in massive industries. Cars were fewer etc etc. I don't need to list all the factors.
So people knew each other better, because they spent more time together.

Things are better in many ways and worse in some ways.
I NEVER think that this is a sh/t time to live, in fact quite the opposite.

I was born into a little oasis in time which was relatively peaceful, relatively well off, relatively healthy etc.
I was and am bloody lucky and know it.
People who moan in this country about the state of affairs, given the abject misery elsewhere in the world, ought to count their lucky stars instead.

And yes, the 'things were better in my day' view is a function of growing old/er.
I would love to go back in time to live it all again, but I don't think times are worse today because of that wish.
There is just something special about salad days that we long for.
Shagging like a ram mainly.

Was it as bad as the scum that were around during the war: www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/ ... h-blackout Robbing and looting during the Blitz? Shows how bad society had got under Churchill's Britain.

Was it as bad as the scum that were around during the war: www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/ ... h-blackout Robbing and looting during the Blitz? Shows how bad society had got under Churchill's Britain.

Interestingly, if you talk to the older generation, they'll tell you it got worse after WW1. I'm guessing that if you'd been able to talk to their parents, they'd tell you it got worse once Queen Vic died.

Things were always better in our youth, it's the way the mind works.


It doesn't make it true though.


(BTW, I can still only see tea and kittens, it's great!)

Quote ="sally cinnamon"Was it as bad as the scum that were around during the war: www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/ ... h-blackout Robbing and looting during the Blitz? Shows how bad society had got under Churchill's Britain.'" true enough but just to remind you that the war government was a coalition government and the same problems would have arisen if Atlee, or indeed anyone else had been PM at that difficult time

Quote ="sally cinnamon"Was it as bad as the scum that were around during the war: www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/ ... h-blackout Robbing and looting during the Blitz? Shows how bad society had got under Churchill's Britain.'" true enough but just to remind you that the war government was a coalition government and the same problems would have arisen if Atlee, or indeed anyone else had been PM at that difficult time

I imagine this -:

The arguments about increasing criminality/moral decline are remarkably similar to those used about the apparent decline in the quality of English (spoken and written). Also a generally unsupported personal viewpoint hinged somewhere in the 1950s/60s, and also a view that has been spouted on and off for hundreds of years if not more.

I think there's a lot of truth in this.

I'd also add that I think that the 24/7 nature of news media and the 'global village' impact of communications technology and social media etc mean that we also know about news events that happen miles away from usd and which we would never have heard of even 30 years ago.

And given that what is 'newsworthy' seems to primarily be negative stories, then that does mean a big increase in negative news that we receive, although it doesn't mean anything about the amount of crime or other negative 'behaviours'.

This "global village" news thing is not good at all. I've been losing sleep ever since I heard about that lost birthday card in Bungay (linked a couple of pages back), it really is too depressing for words

Bungay is a den of iniquity, almost as bad as Beccles with a drugs problem and hooliganism rife - the locals don't go out at night

I wish I was joking !

WHAT are you talking about? "Change" does not inhibit one's ability to reason whether such is for better or worse. Moreover, "Society" is a concept not a sentient entity that makes conscious decisions to become less friendly.

You agree that there is less of a community spirit these days. You claim this change is understandable because "things are different". You have no opinion on whether this loss of community is good or bad (despite admitting social negatives are possible) because your reasons for this are, erm ... reasons for this. To say I'm baffled is an understatement.



In a community, yes. I understand that.



Are you the Magic Eightball in disguise? I won't ask how you arrived at this conclusion.



Really? On the face of it the above precludes the possibility that things REALLY WERE better in my day. Let us pretend some future calamity befalls this nation. Say - a war. You'd look pretty silly strolling down the street wearing an idiotic grin whilst berating others for claiming times were better in their days as they're busy scrambling for the bomb shelters.



Hmmm ...

I've noticed a distinct lack of Dally on this thread now. I wonder where he's got to. Ahh there he is, defending discrimination on another thread.

Bus crashes into pawnbrokers in Coventry. Some passers by decide to loot the shop, rather than help people who might be injured: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-co ... e-17352008 The thing is, this sort of behaviour does not surprise me, in modern day Britain.

Bus crashes into pawnbrokers in Coventry. Some passers by decide to loot the shop, rather than help people who might be injured: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-co ... e-17352008 The thing is, this sort of behaviour does not surprise me, in modern day Britain.

Still casting my eagle eye over proceedings.

Quote ="The Video Ref"Bus crashes into pawnbrokers in Coventry. Some passers by decide to loot the shop, rather than help people who might be injured: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-co ... e-17352008 The thing is, this sort of behaviour does not surprise me, in modern day Britain.'" That's disgusting.

Quote ="The Video Ref"Bus crashes into pawnbrokers in Coventry. Some passers by decide to loot the shop, rather than help people who might be injured: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-co ... e-17352008 The thing is, this sort of behaviour does not surprise me, in modern day Britain.'" That's disgusting.