It's good news week!
By Tony Watts - Editor - 06/08/2008
Scan the front pages on the newspaper stand and it’s hardly surprising that many people feel depressed. If it’s not rising food and oil prices, it’s falling house prices.
Occasionally you get the good news pieces: new hope for cancer, a rare victory in sport or Elvis being spotted eating sausage and chips in a café on the A1. But they are few and far between.
The drip, drip, drip of gloom eats into our national psyche. Yes, life is tough, very tough, for a great many people – but are we really justified in collectively thinking that we’ve never had it so bad? I don’t think so. Everyone reading this will remember the 50s, 60s and 70s – when far more people lived in poverty, those with mental health problems or learning disabilities were locked out of sight, minorities were excluded from the mainstream of society, life expectancy was radically lower and people abusing their power could easily avoid the media glare with a word in the right person’s ear.
Many of you will remember the 40s, when our very survival was in doubt; and some the 30s, when poverty stalked the land.
Yes we have serious problems in society: rising depression and alcoholism rates point to many people living in stressful situations. The fact that 4.5 million people are not in work, where many would like to be … and many more are living on benefits because that’s easier than working … is depressing in itself.
But there is so much to celebrate too. The huge majority of young people, for instance, are hard working, caring and idealistic – not knife-wielding muggers. Crime figures – despite the perceptions – really are on the wane. And simply focusing on all the bad news and worrying about it is – I think – a recipe for a dissatisfied, demoralized society.
What brings all this to the fore? One is Terry Waite’s comment column in August's edition of the paper, in praise of young people, and the other is a fascinating piece I read in The Times by one of their best writers, Daniel Finkelstein, in the wake of the spate of stabbings. He writes that: “In the past two weeks we have had discussion of obesity and of knife crime. If everybody thinks that everybody else is getting fat, then more people will put on weight. The campaigns designed to reduce obesity may be spreading it. Similarly the very idea that every young person is carrying a knife increases knife crime.”
In bald terms, we are talking ourselves into social meltdown and making dire predictions that become self-fulfilling prophecies. He then goes on to discuss the idea – being expressed by David Cameron at the moment – “that social change is as likely, or more likely, to come through influencing behaviour as it is through regulation”.
Certainly all the machismo talk about crackdowns and new laws from the politicians and commentators rarely touches the spot. It simply gives those determined to stay on the fringes something else to rebel against.
It seems to me that making new laws is often a knee jerk reaction to long-term trends. I’m not sure how much they achieve apart from giving politicians something positive to say. But then, the media, and the public, all too often expect action - where some considered thought and intelligent debate would achieve much, much more.