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?

I have just read that too. Made me angry and sad. So many people don't care about animals/wildlife. We are destroying the planet and everything on it.

I don't care if I am a moaning old woman but I am 72 and so so glad I will not have years and years to live and see things get worse and worse. I am also so glad me and DH chose not to bring any children into this world

But don’t you remember when you were young and bitter mad old people banged on constantly about how things have gone to shit and it was all better in their day?

it’s not even like you’ve put any thought into it 🤣

We could call it Keep Britain Tidy.....

Yes, I came here to say this as well. I was raging at the footage. Hoards of people in the (wildlife) pond, and some trying to get to the island in the middle where swans had their nest. There was just awful footage of a swan trying to keep its unhatched egg while both were in the water due to the disturbance.

I also saw footage of the state of the Carding Mill Valley in Shropshire after the bank holiday. It looked as bad as the festival fields when everyone leaves all their crap behind.

I think it's called late stage capitalism and the slow collapse... not sure how we turn it around.

But in 1991 you probably didn’t have the communication reach and then how ever many other random teens all turn up, some with knives.

Not saying what you did was great.

I used to go to all sorts of gigs, mosh pit type thing, mid-teenage, the throng of bodies was intoxicating when you were that age. So I get the need to feel part of a crowd, to be around numbers of your peers. I get that bit, to go and be somewhere alive with youth. And I get that very few places exist where teens can gather in numbers largely unsupervised to have fun and make mistakes.

What I don’t get is that the seeming ringleaders of such gatherings are wannabe hoods up, face masks on, machete waving, thugs.

And I suspect in some places, like Primrose Hill, the April stabbing. If you did get a group together, a fun, no knife group, and you were unlucky a bunch of troublemakers turned up at the same time, that you wouldn’t have any choice but to be harassed.

It does feel worse but I’m a parent of teens now so I am possibly just hyper vigilant.

Drama llama?

So this is acceptable?
If it was your child lost?
The way people treat lifesaving volunteers?

Nothing to do with money, just absolute selfishness, combined with dangerous and appalling behaviour.

And where do you put them so that the people who need to see them will see them often enough?

TV is streamed and you can skip adverts, youngsters don’t watch TV.
Make YouTube stream them? Good luck with that.

Few people read newspapers, or bus stop adverts nowadays.

Where do you put them?

It only takes one popular influencer to debunk the whole campaign for it to be an utter waste of time and money.

Even this response disagreeing sounds angry.

No one accepts any kind of challenge any more.

It shouldn’t be this hard

Well the op was rather ott

@frozendaisy - this did occur to me, yes, that kids and most adults now do not sit watching the tv so….. school? How about schools MUST teach manners as part of curriculum.

If my kids behave horrendously at school, don’t do their homework, speak rudely to the teachers, bully others, then the blame lies with me aswell as my child for failing to bring them up well and do decent parenting.

Yes you will always get an occasional exception (im sure there are serial killers who have come from normal decent families) but generally speaking, most badly behaved children/teenagers are a product of their parents complete lack of boundaries, discipline, care, love, structure in the home etc.

Unfortunately alot of parents dont want to admit that these days - its always someone else to blame (the government, teachers, living in ‘poverty’). ADHD seems to be the new thing to blame and as many people have pointed out, ADHD doesn’t make you an awful person. The behaviour on some of the beaches/beauty spots this weekend is from horrible, self centred, awful people.

To my mind, social behavior in general, started deteriorating around the 90's with the normalisation of "chavish" behaviour for dramatic effect. Eg.the Battersbys in Coronation Street, Shameless, and Jerry Springer/Jeremy Kyle style programming.

It was exactly the same! It spread by word of mouth, school v school, to have a life fight in a leisure centre car park. 40,50 kids tried to turn up- the police got their first after someone reported the plans. A couple of lads were searched and carrying knives. Awful stuff really.

The OP isn’t challenging anyone

Murder on Barmouth beach too

I don’t know. I wish they did though.

it was heartbreaking to see a swan trying to save one of their eggs.

She is disagreeing with you and you responded quite rudely rather proving her point.

This is such a weird post. You’re being a drama llama so that must mean ANYTHING IS OK BY ME. Doesn’t even make sense.

She’s not disagreeing with me in the post you’ve quoted. I think you’ve misread the exchange and maybe mixed it up with someone else’s posts

Ah fair enough, I have misread yours. I thought you were disagreeing with the OP.

What a nasty comment. Do you really think if the parents had said 'kids don't swim there' lives would have been saved. Do you honestly think people who speed were never told about road safety or people who snort drugs didn't realise they were bad for them. People, especially teens have done risky things since the dawn of time and blaming the parents is really narrow minded.

No, we haven’t. Go and sit in the shade and have a cold drink. That might help.
our grandparents generation started a World War. That’s deffo worse.

In a city near me there is a lake. It has numerous signs warning of pollution and underground obstructions. It clearly says NO SWIMMING several times. It isn't a natural lake, it is a flooded industrial site.

Despite this, people swim in it and recently when someone asked on Facebook for wild swimming sites it was recommended by several people. There is a lovely open air pool nearby with life guards.

But of course if someone drowns in the lake the council will get the blame as people cannot take personal responsibility any more.

You are blaming other people. We know facilities are lacking, so at an individual level we should do the right thing:

1. you know your bins aren’t emptied for 3weeks, you have two options; take a picnic so no litter. Or take your litter home. It’s not okay to shove your litter in someone else’s bin, if everyone did that it would quickly overflow leaving litter everywhere.
2. parking; if you can’t park, you go home or go somewhere else (I’m sure you do, and I’m sure you would park in a selfish manner), but no one has a right to park in a dangerous or antisocial way.
3. swimming. Ideally parents would prioritise swimming lessons over any other activity. Sadly though, no matter how good a swimmer you are, the minute you swim in a natural body of water or quarry / man made lake/ reservoir, you take a risk. These bodies of water, can suddenly have massive drop offs which result in sudden extremely cold water. They also have eddies and currents which aren’t obvious on the surface.