Is ’society’ broken?

None of my county constituency has the dreadful gun crime or murderous and tragic outrages we’ve all seen recently on the national news. So I’m certainly not qualified to offer anything other than a fairly uninformed and arms length opinion on whether our society is broken nationally.

But no, despite what some of my national colleagues say, I don’t believe it is broken. I do believe that a growing minority of our population are the problem and some of those need removing from our society, full stop.

My only experience and, I know it is nothing like the problems of inner-city Liverpool or Manchester etc, are the issues that parts of Fazeley, Mile Oak and urban Tamworth face with anti social behaviour, loutishness and low level crime. All those, however, do cause real daily upset and have a real impact on the lives of local people affected.

But is society all broken? No, it’s not. I can only assume that my experiences are replicated in our inner-cities where more extreme life threatening problems have taken hold in parts. And that experience tells me that the vast majority of people are law abiding, good people who care about others and about their communities to varying degrees. My experience also tells me that the great majority of issues, big or small, irritating or tragic, are caused by a tiny minority of people…. many young, sadly.

So it’s not broken throughout, but the problems are growing. A small number of young people and, likely, their families present and future, could be called broken.

I was appalled, depressed and outraged by a news interview I saw around the murder of 11 year old Rhys Jones in Liverpool. It was with a local 10, yes 10, year old boy who quite obviously cared about no one, had no concerns about stealing from or hurting other people and was in no way bothered about the police or authority.

He was proud of the myriad of criminal activities he had undertaken in his young life, the upset he’d caused hundreds of people and quite clearly considered himself immune from the law…. in fact the law was something he laughed about and taunted. I’ve no idea of his family background but can only assume it is not the sought most of us grew up in. What the future holds for that 10 year old is probably one of tragedy for him and others and it’s also likely that if he has a family, that too, may well reinforce the expansion of the broken part of our society.

I think my views are pretty middle of the road…. and those views are probably too simple minded to some ‘experts’. Society should try to help those who are veering away from being normal law abiding citizens. We should try hard and be compassionate. But there are some people, young and older, who simply will not or cannot comply with what most of us think is acceptable behaviour. There comes a time, in my view, where enough is enough and the rights of everyone else have to be prioritised over everything else.

Where and when that point is reached is a matter for our society through politics. I believe we have to be tougher, even with those responsible for anti social and loutish behaviour. We have to stop the expansion of a generation of bad citizens which is growing steadily.

Is society broken? No, but it could be in 20 years time if we don’t act robustly and soon. Those on the receiving end have rights too!

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