A Nation In Denial

I still find it hard to believe the fact that society is in such a mess is a huge surprise to David Cameron. Perhaps it shows just how out of touch our politicians are. And that is not a dig at Cameron's family background, it's a dig at politicians in general.

In addition to out of touch politicians we have policemen who seem to be living on another planet. I've even heard one spouting tosh this morning about us being able to teach the Americans a thing or two about dealing with gangs. Oh, really! The best we could expect from our senior policemen is to sit American cops down in a lecture room and lecture them in the latest sociological studies. While outside a riot takes place and shops are being looted.

The cry of single parents claiming that single parenthood has nothing to do with the current mess is also deafening. I know there are very real reasons for some single parenthood and that many of those single parents do an exceptional job of bringing up their kids. But there are thousands of single women who have had kids, for a variety of reasons, who are unfit to babysit let alone rear children. And yes, there are far too many women with numerous kids, from numerous fathers whose kids are running around ill educated and ill disciplined.

Then there is denial about the education system. Anybody who is involved in staff recruitment can see the drop in educational standards from the quality of written applications. Then you have students with 4A* A Levels which suggests that the difference between the best and the worst in educational terms is a wider gulf than that between the rich and the poor. Or maybe the A*s are actually worthless. The truth is that standards have dropped, teachers gave up the reponsibility to discipline kids decades ago and now, as many teachers openly admit, there is anarchy in far too many classrooms.

Then there is the denial that culture has played any part in fracturing society. It obviously has. We are obsessed with respecting diversity which has produced an us and them society rather than a cohesive society. No longer are we a British society, we are a society that has Afro-Caribbeans, White Irish, White British, Africans, Asians and so on. Just take a look at your average ethnic monitoring form next time you apply for a job. They categorised people like that in South Africa, and called it apartheid.

Then respecting other cultures has reached the level where we are scared of damning anything that is culturally repulsive for fear of being branded racist, a bit like David Starkie has been. There is obviously a gangsta subculture among a minority of black and white kids that is obviously derived from gang culture imported from Jamaica. Black people know that, the majority of whom are decent people and abhor that subculture just as the rest of the population do. But if anybody else dares to point this out they are branded evil it seems.

Until political correctness is wiped away and these and other truths are confronted head on then we are on a never ending downward spiral. That's exactly what the architects of political correctness want. And the rest of the country is in denial.