Respect and good behaviour seem like relics of the past
Despite all the protestations of the liberal elite about opening up our homes to Syrian refugees, apparently not one refugee was offered hospitality by any of them, and now, in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster, they seem to have gone strangely quiet on such matters.
Even Lily Allen, when she was being interviewed by Jon Snow, had nothing to say on the subject, except that she lived nearby. That is surely hypocrisy in action, in view of the desperate need of the surviving residents.
J.K.Rowling talks about the misogyny of men towards women politicians; Theresa May must certainly know all about that one, after the hammering she has received recently, when so many of them have piled in with all the enthusiasm of rugby players, to put the boot in to someone, who is already down.
In her own party, they seem to have very quickly forgotten that it was because of her leadership, that the Conservatives were expected, at the beginning of the campaign, to have a landslide victory, and even the EU crowd thought it perfectly ok to also stab her in the back. We have become so unused to nuance, subtlety, civilised behaviour; so dumbed-down by thoughtless in-your-face belligerence and rudeness on television, that we now feel entitled to behave like playground bullies in any situation.
Emily Maitlis should have been sacked on the spot for her disgraceful Newsnight interview with Mrs May, who, not surprisingly, was driven back into herself, unable to express the compassion she clearly felt, because of the tirade coming from the virago confronting her.
This was totally unprofessional in an experienced news anchor, but typical of the anti-Brexit bias of the BBC towards anyone they perceive to be Eurosceptic. Even Huw Edwards snidely reported, having pointed out various politicians watching the Trooping the Colour, that “Theresa May didn’t come,” failing to add that was because she was chairing a meeting with Grenfell Tower survivors.
At a time when politicians should be pulling together, particularly the Tories, they are behaving like ferrets in a sack and little wonder the populace at large is sick to the back teeth of their antics. Criminalising a Prime Minister, who has worked hard and ethically on behalf of this country, must make the UK distinctly unappealing (and please don’t whinge about winter fuel payments etc. As someone who has never had anything but a “low” income, I totally support her efforts to bring down the spiralling cost of benefit payments, where they are not needed.)
Life is not black and white; there are not “goodies”and “baddies”; failure to see the faults in perceived heroes, such as Jeremy Corbyn, who has reinvented himself for the young, or genuine goodness in a politician, whose campaigning style was not the tub-thumping over-the-top charade people have been groomed to expect, is indicative of a deep malaise in our society.
Standards of good behaviour, courtesy and consideration seem now to be relics of times past, but, as Naoki Higashida, a 13 year old Japanese non-verbal autistic boy wrote, “True compassion is about not bruising the other person’s self-respect.”
Perhaps we should all remember that.
N Jones, Shrewsbury
