Broken Society?

Once again a high profile court case (Edlington Boys) that reflects all that is wrong in our society is being used for political gain…

Ministerial disputes have ensued in the House of Commons; MPs from both sides have jumped on the bandwagon of retribution, suggested it might not have happened if ‘they were in power’ and attempted to use the topic for party political popularity gain.

Today the BBC report that…

Conservative leader David Cameron has said the Edlington torture case was not an “isolated incident” but symptomatic of deeper-rooted social problems.

Suggestions that Britain is a “broken society” are fundamentally wrong, David Miliband of the Labour Party has said.

While problem families did exist, talk of widespread social breakdown was to “misunderstand” the state of the UK, the foreign secretary told the BBC.

The Liberal Democrats do not appear to have joined the fracas thus far however, you can rest assured they won’t be long to follow, especially if they think they can score some popularity points!

Using this subject matter as a political cudgel (in many ways) actually detracts from the issue at hand. There is a danger that the public start to look more at the organisational and political blame issues, as opposed to what actually led to this unfortunate conclusion. But what is the root cause of these types of incidents? Have we actually moved on for the better since the murder of James Bulger?

We probably have moved on but unfortunately in many ways, we’re actually further down the line of depravity.

I have to agree with David Cameron’s ‘Broken Society’ comment however, to be fair to the politicians; it is only partly their fault. Our society has actually been spiralling uncontrolled into a black hole for some time now. And in many ways, this is due to our society’s inability to challenge.

By that I mean, personal freedom of expression and action has been allowed to advance without check. An element of our society has actually grown up without ever really knowing the difference between right and wrong.

They were unchecked, unchallenged and often even encouraged to exercise their personal freedoms of choice and sod the consequences and sod everyone else!

Consequently, many of today’s children have parents who grew up in that type of environment. It is therefore ludicrous for us to expect them to actually possess the parental skills our society now craves. We need to understand that; every society must have standards to adhere to and ones, which are actually enforced when or if people digress from them.

Continuing down this road of lacklustre parenting will only help our country become a modern day Pompeii and help us reach our own Sodom and Gomorrah.

Society (and politicians) should only complain when they are 100% sure their own house is in order!