Broken Britain

So, my favourite politician the Right Hon. David Cameron gave a rather well publicised speech yesterday, not about our gloomy fiscal woes, but about the silent enemy, the danger within: the moral recession. Yes that's right, a recession of morals. We had loads - there was a bubble - but now it burst. Now, he's done this because every Tory rag screams some spectacularily brutal story about children bashing each other's heads in with rocks, like the Edlington case that got wrapped up yesterday. Obviously those cases are horrific violent crimes, but they're isolated. You can't link one robbery in Dagenham to a wave of crime across the country and the fact that two completley brutalised children who had the most appalling of upbringings did something that our society can only classify as evil - does not mean the whole nation is a feral, unfettered wasteland of bloody carnage. Not even the north is like that anymore.

Of course he's done this for political points, and it's sickening that he'd use a scenario like this for votes. It's also sickening that the tabloids use these stories to get more sales, but they have always done that. And it is of course, blown completely out of proportion. What the hell is he going to do about it, anyway. Get a "good vibes stimulus package" through Parliament?Make everyone listen to the Beach Boys for an hour a day? There are no roving death squads of thirteen year olds toting uzis and pick n'mix gummy snakes outside. People only live off of benefits when there is no better alternative - who would risk the villfication of our entire society if you could get more cash 9-5?

And it's not the "PC Brigade" that has done any wrong, either. Health and safety certainly never sent anyone back to the Dark Ages - being polite (yes, even at your own discomfort) never hurt anyone. Seriously, blaming things on "do-gooders"? You haven't got anything better than that? Attacking Good Samiritans is hardly the answer to a society in moral decline, is it? Affirmative action - when minorities get picked over white people for jobs and suchlike, might have meant a few white kids had to go to state schools they really didn't fancy, but it probably saved more black kids from getting stuck in the same pattern. The qualifications you get at highschool really aren't worth anything except to get into sixth form anyway - the thing you gain from highschool is your personality, and the proportion of bullies from one school to another doesen't change all that much. Immigrants are hardly the problem - crime is higher in minorities because they're poorer, not because they all came to Britain to steal your silverware.

"Broken Britain" is a result of a massive pearl-clutching orgy of curtain twitching, neighbourhood-watch types seeing an unaccompanied teenager outside then going on the internet and being scared out of their skins by some article about "how A-Levels are easy peasy". Gordon Brown is not Big Brother (the government does not control every CCTV camera in the country, as you may believe), the Thought Police are not watching your every emotion. You are not the dead. You can go outside and have a nice walk to the shops without a child stabbing you in the head with a sharpened Action Man. There are not droogs roaming about on the streets searching for old women to rape, or for Bargain Booze outlets to sate their febrile lust for alcopops. You needn't punch your son in the kidneys if he uses words like "cool" or "google", or if he listens to My Chemical Romance*, or if he stays up past ten o'clock - and you don't have to castigate teachers for not shooting all of the pupils in the class who throw paper aeroplanes. You live in Middle England, not the world of Mad Max. Just because seventeen year-olds can drive does not mean the motorways resemble Death Race 2000, "acid house" is a music genre, not a religion, computer viruses can't hurt you in the real world and seeing Cheryl Cole's receding neck and hem-line will not transform your children into degenerate murder-addicts.

You can go out at night and not be beheaded by teenagers who saw Saw too many times. In fact, why not go out now, and curtail your time on the internet. Have a pint and talk about the football with your friends. Or if you don't believe me, stay inside, lest the snow come back and freeze you where you stand. Hide! Hide, whilst death rains cold from the skies, or the do-gooders might come back and kill you with their kindness!!!

*My Chemical Romance: Labaratory safety protocol said no, but my heart said yes!