AIBU to think we are edging worryingly close to anarchy?

[Noras]

Am I unreasonable to believe that we are 2 or 3 steps away from anarchy?

Just that really. We see endless footage of quite aggressive and in the open. Shop lifting. People seem to have no shame eg driving over parkland or chucking rubbish out of car windows. Kids ran amok in Cornwall. People decide to live in caravans anywhere and just poo in parkland. Fly tipping is rife.
People freely wal: around the streets under the influence of drugs. People go to upmarket gyms with ankle tags and no sense of shame. People are more abusive and rude.

Yes, but I was mugged in London in the 1990s! And yes, my old school Nokia was stolen along with the paltry amount of cash I had on me. Also, in separate incidents, my bag was stolen from a shop, and my van was stolen from right outside my window, and the police couldn't have been less bothered.

Rents are excessive and house prices extortionate . If you lived in London as I do you would know this.
It wasn’t always this way. My ( immigrant, working class ) parents were able to buy a three bedroom London semi . The same house is now too expensive for young professionals unless they have money from parents or private wealth.
This means “normal’ people with average salaries are struggling to survive in London

Edited to add - this is contributing to many of the problems imo. The social contract is breaking down. Ordinary people feel their standard of living is going down. This is only one part of the problem- there are other factors

Well this man was in a car so he had zero excuse to be throwing his rubbish out of the window. As for fly tipping go to the tip or arrange for the council to collect it. It’s an entitled attitude to dump your rubbish at the end of the street or in a field and expect it to become some else’s problem

This is an interesting read re: the roots of the decline in policing. Especially interesting is how dealing with shoplifters was seen as a step in the training of new police.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/12/shoplifting-police-public-theresa-may-home-secretary

Interesting. Thanks

Okay so you think things were better in the 40s/50s/60s? That’s naive.

it doesn’t seem to occur to people that the ‘social contract’ was there because people didn’t have much choice. There has never been a time that everyone got along and had common goals.

The only true common value for society is to prioritise themselves and their loved ones. If you think it’s any different, then that is naive.

@LiviaDrusillaAugusta how old were you at that time?

Parents born before the war. So mum would say that things were better in terms of public behaviour but would also admit that over population is a big factor in that.

I was definitely taught that we had to take our litter with us - the example someone gave about buying lunch out and then just dumping it in your 10p carrier bag confuses me a lot because we would have just taken it with us until we could put it in our home bin. We didn't buy lunch out we took a packed lunch with us so as a child, I was used to having my drink and snack in my little bag. I was always told "if you can't carry it, don't bring it".

and as others have said, if somebody's chucking litter out of a car, they are literally able to take it home in the car!

honestly, when I read MN, I think I must've had the most amazing upbringing, because no one here seems to believe in helping local community, not even helping friends and neighbours. I was very much brought up by people who believe in that and when my dad died, I got an absolute stack of letters telling me that he'd helped people with everything from negotiating confusing utility bills to taking them to medical appointments. Obviously, I was aware that he did that, but in the busy phase of building a career, I didn't realise how much of it he was doing.

My mum is 87, but she'll still do whatever she can for anyone in need. At the moment that's limited to listening sympathetically over a cup of tea, but she still does it.

anyway, I still think things were better up until 2020 and there was a sharp decline after that. Dad died in 2018. He left at the right time. I think he would be very sad if he could see the state of things now.

I know there were loads of issues with dog poop when I was little because I remember hearing about it and my parents watching the pavement, very carefully!

also @LiviaDrusillaAugusta do you have no sense at all of doing stuff outside of your loved ones? I do think your attitude is the prevalent one now but I also think that attitude is why so many things have gone wrong recently. The local community Centre is probably going to close and they also said to me that it's all a post lockdown collapse.

good post, scary hope not though.

I don’t think I’m naive . I’m old enough to remember the 60’s - I don’t think all things were “better” in the 50’s and 60’s . But I don’t think shoplifting and daylight mugging was as commonplace . It also seems that violence against women and girls has increased? But maybe we are just more aware of it?
Certainly children in those days ( including me) were able to travel to school by themselves at a much younger age and parents were less anxious that they would be robbed/ mugged or molested. I was never mugged as a schoolgirl but it happens all the time to school children in London. Also the carrying of knives by school children- that was not commonplace when I was growing up .
Things have improved greatly in terms of racial
violence thank goodness- but there has been in increase in other types of violence and intimidation.

I agree with this !
( And I also remember the dog poo problem- at least that is one thing that is better now! )

ETA
Sorry - I meant to say I particularly agree with your point about collective responsibility . It’s sad to think how that’s been lost

Parents were less aware. Violence against women and girls was not reported and I personally know several women who were routinely beaten by their husbands but if they tried to report it, it wasn’t taken seriously.

Because children were allowed more freedom, we didn’t tell our parents everything.

I agree the knife issue is awful but other than that it’s no worse

My mother was born in the 40s and despite having independence in theory, had the shit kicked out of her on a regular basis by my cunt of a biological father (late 60s/early 70s).

Unlike most women of her time, she took me and left him, and then was condemned by her own family for doing that.

Dog shit was left where it was done (white dog shit is a thing of the past).

It’s naive to think that being individualistic is a new thing, it’s actually a natural human feeling. If someone fell over in the street or something I would help but outside of that - no.

The difference between me and a lot of others is that I don’t pretend otherwise. People like to paint themselves as selfless
but they aren’t.

I would do anything for the people that I care about. Other than that, no. I don’t pretend I’m something I’m not. I’m ND so it makes it easier.

I have learned over my lifetime that people are unreliable and that’s fine - I don’t expect anything else.

@LiviaDrusillaAugusta I realise you won't want to give away personal information and I don't blame you

When I hear people speaking the way you are though, I often find that they either don't go out in the evening or they're always travelling by car ... and often they will have a nice big house and garden and they spend most of their time there

In my old area in London, I had a lovely elderly neighbour who said to me bluntly that she would not have realised how bad things were if she wasn't in a building with what she called "young people". She never went out after dark, actually.

she really only took it seriously when her daughters refused to come by for dinner during the week - because it got to a point where going home from the bus station even at around nine or 10 pm, it was not pleasant.

She actually asked me if they were being over the top. Coming into that bus station at nine or 10 pm, i used to rush home very quickly - the flats were just round the corner. But her daughters were waiting for a bus so potentially would have to stand there for 10 or 15 minutes - and I totally understand why they wouldn't want to. And they weren't making it up to get out of visiting their mum either 😂

@LiviaDrusillaAugusta so you weren't around in the 60s

Your observation makes me think that we are a lot more concerned about what goes on behind closed doors now than we used to be. Meanwhile, what goes on in public is just - bleurgh.

Yeah it's possible that some of My adult neighbours, when they were growing up, maybe that was an abusive marriage and I wouldn't know.

I don't think being individualistic is new. But I think individuals valued community more pre-2020, or maybe it's pre-social media.

Thats quite the assumption. I don’t have a car or a ‘nice big house or garden’ and actually I find it a little insulting that you think I’m some privileged little princess.

Until about a year ago I lived in a fairly shitty area that was very busy at night. I still went out when I needed to at night. It was no more dangerous than 20/30 years ago. It’s always been dangerous

I can guarantee you that a large proportion of the adults you knew while growing up were in fact in abusive marriages.

I think it feels worse now because of 24-hour news cycles and social media.

All of the comments about shop lifting completely misses the point that people cannot afford to buy decent food !! Poverty based crime is a government failure

The security guard will get fired for that
Our local Sainsbury’s had the lovely Mr. Singh who used to keep the shoplifters at Bay until he got involved in an altercation and fought back. Next thing we know Mr. Singh was fired.

Completely agree I was discussing with my brother going to stock up at Costco for water in case there was an Armageddon and he quite rightly pointed out. If there was an Armageddon he wouldn’t be paying for water at Tesco’s. He’d be taking it.
I do wonder if we’ve reached that point for some people

And I think community was only a thing through necessity. Since social media everyone has shared ‘their truth’ with their own biases.

It is naive to expect people to
act against their own interests for the benefit of others when it comes to it. Spoiler alert - they generally don’t.

Or they feel entitled to take stuff. Never mind that everyone has to pay more.

One place that has plummeted downhill is Bournemouth. It’s shocking, actually. A beautiful sandy beach, and there were lovely ornamental gardens and nice hotels. Now it is drug-ridden, gangs of men, anti-social behaviour, visible drug use.

I know practically every town has gone downhill, but for a jewel in the country’s crown to be allowed to descend into a miserable mess… so depressing.

I can’t help feeling that we are heading US way: cities have been abandoned by the middle/working classes. I know an elementary school teacher who has just fled St Louis for the burbs. They said the place where they were born and bred had become a hellhole. I guess the same is happening here: people abandoning towns to populate vast new-build estates. It’s certainly the case in my closest city.

Lots of shoplifters can afford it but don't want to pay. I.e. the regular shoplifters in our village co op who blatantly come in to "take" what they want for their lunch - often driving tradesmen vans such as roofers and scaffolders - they're not on the bones of their arses, they just want something for nothing.

Most major cities have CCTV cameras at every corner if people are stupid enough to be shoplifting and then getting into vans that are identified with registration plates and company names they will get a knock on the door

Great. So we should all steal what we want. At what level of “poverty” would you excuse someone stealing M&S food? Or would you go San Francisco-style and say that stealing less than $900 of goods from a shop is not a felony?