A snapshot of recession-hit, ‘why should I care about you?’ Britain at the end of January 2012.
I began this week with a visit to a lady who I believe is going to do an enormous amount for the cause of naturism in this country. I won’t name her, because this blog post isn’t about her, but anyone who has any involvement with me on Facebook and Twitter won’t find it too difficult to work out her identity.
We talked for hours on Monday afternoon and only a prior engagement in Tamworth forced me to end the conversation; she is enthusiastic, hugely intelligent, determined....just the kind of person British Naturism needs.
We had never met before Monday but by the end of the day we were Facebook friends and following each other on Twitter.
Then, on Tuesday, she posted on FB that another motorist had smashed into the back of her Smart car, crushing the rear panel, then driven off without reporting the incident.
She can’t afford to claim on her car insurance, because it would put her premiums through the roof, so she will drive around in a bashed-up car for the foreseeable future until she can find a way to get the panel replaced.
CCTV? Yes, there was a camera in the vicinity but it was pointing away from the scene of the crime so is no help whatever.
Crime? Yes, that is what this was. The perpetrator has presumably given no thought whatsoever to the consequences for the car’s owner and not felt the need to own up to their actions. Thought for other people doesn’t come in to the mind of people who do things like this. Getting away from the scene as fast as possible so that their thoughtlessness/stupidity/ignorance doesn’t come back to haunt them is the only thing they think about.
Fast forward to Tamworth town centre on Friday morning. With the sun not yet risen, a hard-working conscientious citizen opens their living-room curtains to start another day and realises that an ornament which has graced their garden for nearly two years has vanished. Next to where it stood when they went to bed the night before is a trail of telltale footprints.
The citizen’s partner (your blogger) rises from his bed and spends the next hour combing every garden, bush, tree, wastebin shed, dustbin within half-a-mile of their home, looking for any sign of the missing ornament.
Sadly, there is none.
The ornament (a carbon-fibre statue of an English bulldog, since you ask) would cost around £40 to replace and it was almost in my mind to do so before Mrs W came home from work. But why should I? Why should I give people who have no thought for the property of other citizens the satisfaction that I had to put myself out and spend my hard-earned money to replace something they had stupidly and, probably, drunkenly stolen?
It should be said that Warrillow Towers has been in this part of Tamworth town centre for nearly 17 years and this is the first incidence of crime we have suffered. But that is not the point. The point is that this country is creating a generation of people who probably think that stealing our ornament is funny; that smashing into my friend’s car, driving off and leaving her to face the consequences is not their problem.
Well, it isn’t and it is. This country has to get back to a position where we all have respect for each other and each other’s property. We’re light years away at the moment, in my view. There are a million reasons for that, most of which David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and any other cosseted Home Counties-based politician have no idea how to tackle.
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