OUR NON SENSE OF SMELL

There occasionally are incidents or alterations of national  procedures which whilst perhaps insignificant in themselves are indicative of profound changes in what could arguably be termed “our culture” defined as the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society.  In my lifetime I would suggest that some examples of our culture were free university education, blue hardcover passports and the discretion allowed to eg teachers or police officers to make on the spot decisions without recourse to a higher authority because those professionals had earned social and professional respect.  At “street level”  the advice of most parents to their children if they found something of value  on the road was to hand it in at a police station.  It was a given;  a no brainer: a classic example of the difference between a child well brought up and one with no moral parameters.  That simple concept more in keeping with theory than practice served me and my contemporaries well.  Only once did it actually happen to me  and I recollect as a child taking what seemed a very large pound note to the local police station where it probably ended up in the sergeant`s back pocket.  That could not happen today.  Many police stations are refusing to accept lost property placing the onus on the finder to seek out the loser. 

Readers might consider this change in procedure  trivial and it is.  But it is symptomatic of what changes in law, policing, individual freedoms and justice are happening right under our noses.  Because individually these  changes  might emit little odour,  collectively our  noses should be overwhelmed by the smell.  They aren`t;  and to our detriment as a society our collective culture has passed the point of no return.  Where in most matters British was a term of pride it is now just the description of an  island off the north west coast of Europe.