I've only just stopped seething about this and Ray still has the odd dark
mutter - but I cannot begin to imagine what gets into people or where their
wits are, if they think this is any way to behave *anywhere*, let alone in
someone else's garden! For a moment we were looking for the Candid Camera,
so astonished were we at this outrageous behaviour. Luckily, it's the only
time anything *quite* as nasty as this has happened and I hope it's the
last!


I think you can blame the education system. A significant proportion
of at least one generation from the late '70s and '80s grew up
seemingly in a complete vacuum re. social mores, and with little or no
grounding about our particular society, and I mean particluarly
England and/or Great Britain. I believe a social experiment has been
carried out in order to produce a population which has no "baggage"
from the past. We seem to have produced some people who are empty
vessels in regard to "fitting in" and perhaps even in regard to basic
knowledge. Now, I am trying to understand this for what it is, because
in the other direction, education can and has been used for propaganda
purposes, but there has to be some sort of happy medium, in which
people learn to have certain "standards" but can question them in a
rational way, rather then simply not understand, or be plain ignorant.

This is very complicated and you could get into all sorts of areas re.
"the establishment" and its traditional disdain, and therefore lack of
thought regarding educating the masses or not. It used not to matter
whether we were educated or not, because the same people held sway
over us. That has changed, thankfully, but perhaps it went too far the
other way, and some sort of order needs to be regained now. Perhaps a
start has been made with "citizenship" classes.

Rather too many "" in this piece I am afraid but I haven't really
planned this response. It's been a sort of stream of conscience. Sorry
about that.

John
In limine sapientiae