My generation, which is well on the way to extinction, spent a large portion of its life in penury, which induced a high level of respect of the value of money. It was 1935 before we really began to come out of the recession caused by the First World War, and the change in our attitude and psychology can be seen everywhere. But then of course a few years later we were pitched into another war, and so it wasn’t until the late 50s that we began to get back to where we had been all those years before. In all that time there was no such thing as recognized minority rule, because the minority in a largely number of cases, by heredity, were ruling us anyway. To my knowledge the phrase only became common parlance when we started to have large numbers of immigrants from countries in the Empire.
What started the thoughts was the fact that recently, every time chemist delivers medication to our house, we have to sign a chitty, which literally tells us nothing, must be a bane to the chemist, a total waste of paper as far as I’m concerned, as once I wanted to find when something had been delivered, none of these chitties contain any useful information. I assume what little information there is, it is kept on record, and I can only believe that this has occurred, because somewhere, someone has been behaving in an antisocial fashion. This seems to be another of these knee-jerk reactions rather than considered thought. It is you and I who are paying every-time these reactions take place, when on a percentage basis the actual cause is committed by a very small percentage.
I don’t propose to list all the areas that are in this class, like health and safety, and above all drink-driving. Just as an example I propose to examine drink-driving. I believe that anybody who drives a car while under a dangerous level of alcohol abuse is a criminal. But the effect that the law now has, has totally wrecked what used to be pleasant social events, an invitation to dinner, a buffet party, or just a family going out on a Saturday night for a meal. At least one member can’t have a drink, this fact may seem trivial, but in reality it sets one member of the party apart from the rest. In the, 60s and 70s we used to run enjoyable dinner parties for say eight people, and quite a large number at other celebratory times of the year. These do’s were obviously reciprocated. They started generally about eight o’clock and went onto the small hours. There were no serious cases of drunkenness because by that time in the morning the effects had considerably worn off, and also traffic was so light as to be almost non-existent.
People are constantly creating about the loss of human rights, in my view it is the government’s inability to control the minority in whatever heinous act if it is involved in, by bringing such legislation that costs the country a fortune, creates mountains of paperwork, and the people who suffer most, on a percentage basis are the silent majority, both financially and with the regulated loss of legitimate freedom. Punish the criminal, not the silent, law-abiding majority. It is too easy just to introduce random criteria on a catch-all principle. It removes the need for self control.