Moan Moan Moan

I've always been a fairly uncharitable person when it comes to other people's failings, and one of things that's struck me about getting older - as well as the encroaching aches and pains [predominantly in the back, shoulder and right knee, thanks for asking] and the all-consuming feeling that I have yet to achieve anything worthwhile - is quite how pronounced my intolerance has become since my comparatively free-and-easy youth.

These deep flaws of character or action invariably strike me as so blatant that the transgressors must surely be cultivating them with malicious intent, deliberately inconveniencing those around them for their own twisted amusement. The only alternative - that they are utterly oblivious to their shortcomings as either a valid member of society or a human being - is simply too hideous to contemplate.

But contemplate it I shall, and that is one of my own many flaws. Hey, at least I can recognize them.

As I trudge, resigned, through yet another soul-sapping round of daily mundanities, I can't help but notice that there is a distinct absence in those around me of any of the qualities inherent to a social conscience. Everywhere I turn, I'm confronted by a wall-eyed mob of bubblebrained losers - scattering litter hither and yon, howling obscenities and/or threats and actively encouraging their dogs to carpet the walkways with 'dirty eggs'. Some days I'd swear there was more shit than pavement around Brighton, penalty notices affixed to lamp posts offering scant deterrent to those dog owners apparently determined to acquaint shoe owners with the intricacies of their tread patterns. Girls not yet old enough to leave school dress as if they're on their final verbal warning from a particularly volatile pimp. Youths strip to the waist, the better to display a malnutrition-defined physique and de rigueur faux-Maori neck tattoo, maintaining malicious eye contact in the hope of rendering their afternoon marginally more enjoyable.

Even the basics of politeness seem anathema to the hoi polloi. It no longer appears to be the done thing to indicate gratitude for someone else [OK, me] having held open a door or stood aside on a narrow pavement. Indeed any verbal interaction with strangers is to be avoided, lest, one can only assume, this encourage the natural progression to an unsolicited physical inconvenience - a right good stab in the guts, for example, or one of these new-fangled 'head butts' I've been reading about in the news. Stick these bozos in a car, one hard outer casing further removed from the proximity necessary for meaningful social interaction, and the shortfall in manners becomes even more apparent.

One of David Cameron's governmental tenets is that of the 'Big Society', a concept that would have been derided as typically loony, left-wing, pie-in-the-sky idealism had it been mooted by the opposition. The idea is that we, the unwashed masses, would, in a fit of unprecedented altruism, automatically take it upon ourselves to fill the gaping voids left in our social services by the withdrawal of public funding; services that we have been coddled - coddled, I say! - into believing we should be perfectly entitled to in return for our more-than-reasonable taxes.

The real and unadvertised reason is that whoever takes charge is staring national bankruptcy in the face and unprecedented savings need to be made across the board. Naturally they want to spin that as a good thing, rather than the really bad thing it actually is, but there's absolutely no way on Yahweh's good Earth I want either a] to do it myself - I've got little enough free time as it is, and I'm not one of those people who's always putting themselves forward for Residents' Associations or Boards of Governors, any of that nonsense - or b] to let any of these hooting numbskulls take responsibility for maintaining our precious and fragile infrastructure. That, in its essence, is why we pay taxes - so someone will scoop up all our crap for us and whisk it away in a flurry of pixie dust.

If people already felt invested in their society then Cameron's crazy scheme might just work, but all the signs are pointing contrary to that assumption.