Have we, in the UK, become selfish, lawless and irresponsible?

[Commencethe]

This Bank Holiday seems to have descended into chaos and honestly I am starting to wonder what is happening to people generally.

This weekend alone there have been reports, tragically, of teenagers drowning in rivers and reservoirs, emergency services unable to reach one incident because of illegal parking, beauty spots gridlocked with abandoned cars, beaches overwhelmed with people drinking and taking drugs to excess, fights, weapons, rubbish left everywhere, police being called because a pair of teenagers were apparently having sex openly in a park, and racist outrage because a tourist attraction acknowledged Eid and invited people to celebrate it.

What strikes me is that this feels much wider than just young people behaving badly. Adults blocking roads and verges because they cannot be bothered to park properly. Families leaving litter behind. People ignoring safety warnings around open water. Whole communities unwilling to challenge awful behaviour because someone else should deal with it.

And every time there is discussion afterwards, the blame immediately goes to lack of education, the police, the council, schools, anyone except the individuals involved, their parents, or society more broadly.

I also wonder whether increasingly populist politics and public discourse have plays a role. Constant anger, division and disrespect towards other people, experts, authority and even basic rules seems to have filtered into everyday behaviour. More entitlement, less responsibility, less thought for anyone else.

At what point did personal responsibility disappear? When did we stop caring about our impact on other people or lose any sense of community?

It all feels increasingly selfish, lawless and entitled. Less consideration, less accountability, less self discipline.

Have standards genuinely collapsed or am I overreacting and being unreasonable?

Just to add, lots on the news today about young adults being out of work. One of the young adults interviewed wanted to find work but said he had played truant at 14 and been kicked out. 14 and not in school is a huge parenting failure. Lack of parenting has failed him but credit to him for realising he wants a job.

The natural consequence of the Long March of the Progressive Left over the past several decades where actions have been determined to have no consequences and the rights of the individual trump the rights of the many.

Coincidentally my local news is on. Reports from the weekend on the beach.

Interviewing local residents about adults and young people - ‘unprecedented poor behaviour’, ‘inconsiderate parking, including the lifeboat being blocked in’, ‘high levels of anti social behaviour’ ‘lots of drunk teens, higher than seen in the last 25 years’. Local residents feeling unsafe in their home town.

News reporters asking ‘do you know where your children are?’, ‘do you know what they are up to, if not why not?’. A definite lack of parental responsibility.

I would say, the result of austerity with huge cuts to public services by the Conservatives government, combined with private venture profiting from the gaps left and public bodies having no choice to pay inflated costs to meet their statutory duties. Shareholders benefit though.

Selfishness includes being unwilling to pay higher taxes to provide the services communities require.

But where do troubled families come from in the first place?? (I have also been working with kids for over 20yrs, thus why I decided to do the degree)

It's rarely straightforward, poverty is a cycle, as is poor education.

It's not like I said parenting has no effect, just that it's much more complicated than than. Children have access to a LOT more information now they know the prospects are pretty poor compared to 15/20 years ago...it's all over social media. Especially those who aren't academic, as school only cater to academic kids now!

My kids are very well behaved, even my son who has ADHD and doesn't like school very much, cos of how bad the modern school system is for neurodivergent kids (luckily he has had wonderful teachers so far!) but he is projected to be taller than me by 14, his ADHD also makes him incredibly stubborn and he will dig his feet in more, the more you push.
If at 14 he suddenly refused to go to school, I would be hard pushed to get him there if he doesn't wanna go. Obviously I like to think that I will have raised him well enough by then that it would never be an issue....but friends also have a massive influence at that age too, so it not impossible
So yes, parenting matters, but it's still much more than JUST parenting.

Ironically Covid was supposedly reigniting community spirit, care for others etc.

Covid actually created sense of selfish entitlement.

One anecdote from Devon sums this up. Family from London came down during night in car and sent luggage by courier in case of being stopped.

Father had Covid but still went to village shop. Hospitalised and died. Adult son went back to village shop which was doing 30 home deliveries for elderly and was indignant to be refused service.

Ironically Covid was supposedly reigniting community spirit, care for others etc

Bolllocks. Covid created more discord than anything else. As I said earlier, it pretty much sent communities back to a Nazi regime with neighbours spying on each other, people clashing over it and ‘dobbing in’. Just look at the posts from Mumsnet at the time! It created extreme distrust in individuals and exactly the opposite of community spirit a lot of the time.

Covid actually created sense of selfish entitlement

Per above, yes and no. It did, but that’s what happens when people have contrast in each other, there is community breakdown. When you come out of that, people then move forward just operating in their own orbit.

Perhaps they were identifying as waterfowl.

Trans ducks are ducks after all.

You lost me at "Nazi". Ridiculous comparison.

They're really not.

Yes, this is the result of too many people and less educated people than ever. Add the misery of the cost of living crisis making people very unhappy and unruly.

Nothing is changing with labour apart from the people becoming less tolerant and more selfish. Conservatives are gone and is much worse now,

As for the taxes most people really do not have a choice as it comes from their wages, However, what is the point of paying if masses of people moved here to join the welfare system and not contribute enough or are not net contributors.

Are you in the NE OP?

We've had some absolutely shocking stuff happening here over the last month, gangs (hundreds) of kids making their way to local beaches, drunk and abusive on public transport, then proceeding to drink themselves into a stupor on the beach, lighting fires, fighting, taking drugs (fentanyl is rife), there have been instances of girls being raped and sexually assaulted while comatose through drink and drugs.

This is not normal.

I think that thanks to 24/7 news and social media, we are exposed to so much more bad behaviour. So any prohibition or shared understanding that some forms of behaviour just aren’t acceptable has been hugely eroded. Public sex? Look at the glorification of porn and trashy tv. Pranks / taking stupid risks for likes and laughs - YouTube is full of people doing this. Fighting, arguing, rudeness - ditto. The message people, especially young people, are getting is that it’s just fine - in fact it positively rewarded to behave like this. No shaming, outrageous behaviour is shown as normal.

People are definitely ruder , angrier , more entitled. I think it’s worse since covid actually.

Baloney.

Both my parents’ families were poor. Really poor. Dm was hospitalised for malnutrition as a child. Did they steal, litter, swear, indulge in violence? Did they hell.

Although it’s deeply unfashionable to say it, the breakdown of the traditional family is behind a great deal of trouble. I worked in one of the (officially!) worst schools in the country. One parent cannot control wilful teens. Some tried and struggled, and others simply could not care less. Money? These kids were in head to toe Nike with iPhones. Several had Moncler puffer coats! No one could be arsed to go to the free breakfast club. If there is little socialisation and poor role models at home then throwing ££££ at the problem has no effect. They just buy more “stuff”.

This is probably sounds like such a tiny thing but the other day I was in a Wetherspoons and was sitting on a table by the fire escape. I was there about an hour if that and I would say about eight different groups of people used it to go outside (there was a door metres away - both led onto a verandah and the door was actually closer to the actual exit). Sounds so stupid but I couldn’t get my head round it. It was actually quite cool where I was that day and I shut it after a couple went out to ‘vape’. The woman came running over shouting that she wanted to come back in. I said that fire doors need to be kept closed. But even if not that maybe I was feeling cold or didn’t want to have to breathe in her vape. Of course didn’t a couple of kids use it seconds later so then I had to go over again and close it 🫣 I do think there’s an atmosphere generally of I want to do this and no one should get in my way.

Which bit about monitoring neighbours activities and informing authorities if you believe they are not adhering to government mandated standards did you kiss in history lessons?

A complicated and nuanced problem...

But I think the climate (and 'cult') of non-judgmentalism which has been the fashion for some decades now is one issue. An idea that people mustn't be criticised for anything tends to dominate education, public services and government in general.

So - dropping litter, vandalism, anti-social behaviour and more serious things such as rioting, looting - there's always someone along to make an excuse for these things. You can be constructive and look for ways to help the perpetrators AND understand the causes while still unambiguously condemning the behaviour.

In my experience in various education/public service jobs I got the impression that such people were more interested in seeming 'less judgmenntal than thou' and virtue signalling than actually resolving any of the issues.

On MN too, people are always throwing around the accusation of judgmentalism. So what? Isn't it just having an opinion about something, and we're all allowed that. It's how we express our boundaries (ugh...horrible word), standards and values both as individuals and as a society.

As they try to pick up the pieces of austerity and fill the many, many gaps left (or not if taxes do not rise and the country has less money to spend).

My LA had to save £5 million each year under the Conservatives. This was year on year. They did meet the budget constraints but so much public service lost ( early years support and safeguarding oversight, school transport, SEND support, school services ended, budgets slashed, family centres gone, youth centres and teams gone, libraries (apart from where they are ran by volunteers), council offices closed and sold.

And that is just in the Children and Young People Service. Think of the same across a whole range of council departments. ( Adult Social Care, Highways, Planning, Environment to name a few).

Baloney?

I don’t understand how my quote relates to your comment?

I agree about prioritising family spending. I also don’t see a link between less money and bad manners. We can all be polite and kind, it doesn’t cost!

Designers labels, high spend on technology is all part of the problem - entitled behaviour without working for what you have. Shoplifting, fake items, theft, drug dealing all links to an entitlement to ‘have’ without the means to do so.

Rubbish, they have already put back in place vital services that were closed under the Tories including family Hubs to replace sure start centres. A lot of what we have now is because of the defending of services such as those. They can't however fix 14 years of austerity and Brexit in 2 years. I'm not even a fan of kier starmer and even I can recognise that.

I just visited a very good area of London. It is now in a really bad state and shops are closed. The economy is really suffering and a lot of people have left. However, obviously someone will have to carry on paying benefits and services. I am very interested to see what is going to happen and if Labour is able to make and keep the promises. So far nothing much.