Over the years I have been fortunate to visit many countries throughout the world, over 25 in fact on 4 continents, and this has I'm sure helped give me a fair understanding of the rich and fascinating diversity of cultures on our planet.

It has also helped me form some worrying concerns of the increasingly collapsing standards that we have in this country – and you may feel that this is an unnecessarily pessimistic, Victor Meldrew-like attitude, but this is not necessarily an opinion to be questioned, but facts – so let me explain.

THE DEMISE OF BRITISH INDUSTRY

In the late 18th century, there were a number of ground-breaking developments that occurred in our humble little isles that ultimately changed the world of industry, manufacturing and agriculture.

This extraordinary period became known to school kids as The Industrial Revolution.

A young Scot by the name of James Watt created the advanced steam engine that would eventually transform the mining industry, revolutionise the textile industry and give birth to the world's first railway system.

As steam power gathered momentum, manual labour was increasingly replaced by machine-based power; advanced iron-making techniques evolved and trade expansion was increased by the introduction of canals.

Britain became the birthplace and centre of industry and this wealth, knowledge and imagination swiftly spread throughout Europe and the rest of the world.

Since the early 1800s, our British Shipbuilding Industry was the largest in the world and in 1960 there were over 25 major ship-builders dominating the world market with fat order books and employing tens of thousands.

However, there are now just 4 major ship-building yards remaining in Britain, barely managing to keep their heads above water (and not necessarily even building ships) with South Korea and China dominating the world market.

Equally sad is the British Car Industry that once boasted romantic names such as the inimitable Bentley, the stately Rolls Royce and the Vauxhall, first built in the South London town of the same name. The Austin, Morris, Triumph, Lotus, Wolseley, Riley, Daimler, Healey, Rover, Hillman, MG, Land Rover and the ubiquitous Mini.

All have now gone or sold off into foreign hands.

Indeed the only British cars remaining are the Aston-Martin (although partly owned by Ford and a Kuwaiti company) and a handful of small sports car companies making just a few crafted vehicles a year.

In the 1960s, excluding the American Fords, over 95% of the cars on our roads were made in Britain by British-owned companies. That figure is now less than 0.001%

This small, island nation once had one of the world's largest Fishing Fleets employing over 50,000 in the 1930s, and again this has been decimated to a handful of boats in each port caused partly by the mega-giant Russian and Japanese factory ships vacuuming up the stocks and leaving vast areas of our seas as barren deserts.

And there is also the ineffectiveness of the EU that bans the British boats from many of our own waters yet turns a blind eye to the Spanish and French fleets that patrol our seas scooping up thousands of tons of undersized fish.

Yet even all this is overshadowed by the brainless dictate from the bureaucratic hoards in Brussels that all our fishermen must only take strict quotas of fish by species – meaning that once they have achieved the quota of that species all the excess fish must be thrown back into the sea. Dead!

The result of this madness, which hides behind the dismissive title 'discard', means that the boats have to stay out twice as long, perhaps 10-14 days, to achieve the allowed quota of target species and then throw back (according to our fleet's own assessments) over 50% of their catch!

Yes, you read that correctly. Over 50%. Millions on tonnes of valuable fish each year.

This is true insanity. It is obviously harmful to the fishing fleet (as they have to work twice as long), harmful to the species (how can a species be 'sustainable' if we destroy and waste vast quantities of its stocks like this?), harmful to the world's poverty and hunger problems (the figures relating to 'discard' are astonishing and could probably solve the world's starvation problems single handedly!) and naturally harmful to the environment (dumping mountains of carcasses into the oceans daily can only poison our already polluted seas further).

This depressing tale has spread throughout British industry; the Textile Industry is now a shadow of its former self largely due to shockingly cheap foreign imports bought from Far Eastern sweat shops; the Manufacturing Industry is now almost invisible because of the decline in other industries (such as Ship-building and Cars) meaning that we now 'import parts' rather than 'make things'.

The British Mining Industry employed over 750,000 people in the late 1940s and has now disappeared in many of the once traditional mining areas such as the North-East of England and the Rhondda Valley in Wales and, with that, whole towns and communities have gone.

In 1984, the National Union of Miners went head to head with the struggling National Coal Board and the Thatcher Government leading to one of the most terrifying strikes in British history and resulting in the eventual dismantling of the industry at an astonishing cost of £34 billion.

In 1980 we produced 94% of our coal requirement. We now import 3 times the amount of coal that we produce ourselves, mainly from Poland and Russia.

Privately, my work took me very close to those events and to the inner circles of some of those concerned, but to this day I've no idea who was the maddest, Margaret Thatcher or Arthur Scargill.

The Agricultural Industry is slowly dying. We were once almost entirely self-sufficient, yet 60% of our orchards have disappeared since 1950 and if you drive around the M25 you will see vast swathes of once fertile land left fallow (or rather empty, which is different!) or perhaps a sea of yellow rape grown purely to gain EU subsidy, or once rural areas now concreted over for yet another housing estate.

A Sussex farmer once told me bizarrely that "it's far more productive now to NOT grow anything". Yes, the lunatics really are now running the asylum.

The Government Spin machines would deny that there is any truth in these sad statements and to paraphrase a certain Mandy Rice-Davies in her famous Old Bailey appearance in 1963 "Well, they would, wouldn't they" (ironically, also questioning a Government Minister's honesty).

But it does seem that from the 1970s to the present day, successive British Governments have decided that we will no longer make money out of inventing, developing and making things, but we'll make all our money out of 'money' So the future prosperity of our once proud nation is now in the safe hands of our Banks, Financial Institutions and The European Union.

God help us!

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF GOOD MANNERS

Once upon a time in the not too distant past, Britain was a byword for exceptional manners and our quirky behaviour of 'please' and 'thank you' and 'may I' raised eyebrows throughout the world with a mixture of amusement and respect.

This really hit home to me during my first trip to America about 30 years ago when the short, sharp and rather wide New Yorkers seemed to look on in awe as we asked politely for anything, whether on a bus, in a restaurant, in a shop or simply for directions.

They appeared to react with perplexed bewilderment and embarrassed discomfort that people could be so intrinsically good and sincerely polite - perhaps the antithesis of the average New Yorker.

In Britain, good manners were instilled from birth, were a major element in most Brits upbringing, and the influences and reminders were everywhere, mainly of course from parents, but also from grandparents, aunts and uncles, teachers, police, shopkeepers, caretakers and even complete strangers – because good manners were a national trait of this country.

However, in today's Britain they are now the exception and sadly not the rule.

It seems that people often haven't got the time or the inclination to be openly polite to others and aggressiveness and rudeness are far more common. You only have to hover near a counter in a shop or supermarket and listen to customers grunts and impatient rants to understand that.

Perhaps it's because of this endemic poor behaviour by customers, that 'Customer Services' far too often behave similarly and you often find yourself on the other end of a telephone conversation with a disinterested groaner who sounds as if he or she was reading a book and you've disturbed their day.

In America they'd last a day or two in their job at best.

I can think of a few companies that have exceptional Customer Service departments who are extremely polite and outwardly helpful (which is supposedly their job!) but that only goes to magnify the problem of plummeting standards as the exceptional should be the normal as indeed it once was.

And whatever happened to the ancient British art of queuing that was once such an idiosyncrasy of these isles and one that I rarely saw anywhere else in the world (and if you've ever fought and bustled your way through a ski lift queue in France you may well agree).

Certainly in London, and probably throughout most of our cities, bus stops now seem more like a demonstration than a queue, until the bus arrives when the crowd then take on the demeanor of the door-opening stampede at the Harrods January Sales.

But far more worrying, this decline in standards rears its head in many other ways, some extremely irritating, some quite disgusting and some even sinister.

Travel on public transport regularly and you'll be confronted with pushing and shoving, loud 'personal' music, noisy mobiles (and noisy mobile conversations), seats used as footrests and the atmosphere often polluted with the stench of fast food.

Travel in a car in London and you'll be lucky to cover a mile or two before you encounter rudeness, impatience, arrogance or more dangerously, road rage anger.

The trains, buses and pavements in many areas have become a giant litter bin and whenever I return from a trip abroad I am now embarrassed and saddened by the disgusting mess of human detritus that confronts me and certainly in my local area it appears that spitting in the street has become a national sport.

Maybe you don't see any of this. Maybe you live cocooned in a safe little home in a quiet little country village with a cosy pub a short walk away. Lucky you.

THE COLLAPSE OF LAW & ORDER…AND DISCIPLINE

As a kid, growing up in the supposedly rough, tough East End of London, we were very aware that whatever we got up to could be great fun unless it went too far and then we'd be in big trouble – with our parents or our teachers or the police.

The all-important line that was drawn between just being naughty kids and being budding delinquents was basically lack of consideration for others and any act that caused others stress, financial loss, bullying, physical violence, criminal damage were absolute no-no's.

It was seemingly OK to play pranks on neighbours and we'd get away with them time and time again, as long as they were just harmless pranks, like this…

We lived in a 5-story block of flats with 2 homes on each floor and we devised an ingenious and quite elaborate game of 'Knock-down-ginger'. We'd first ensure that everyone was in (early evening in the autumn was easy – we'd just check the living room lights!) then creep up to the top floor and tie string to the first door knocker.

Then, we'd connect the string, fairly tightly, to the next door knocker across the landing and then down to the 4th floor, tying the string, connecting the knockers all the way down to the 1st floor – 10 knockers all connected. Then knock on the 1st door – and scarper!

The occupant would open the door and there was no-one there, but more importantly in doing so their action would knock the 2nd door – and so it went on, all the way up to the 10th flat. What larks, and occasionally we'd get caught and receive a real good telling off, but always between gritted teeth because that person, whether parent or neighbour, knew it was also quite funny.

No-one got hurt, nothing was damaged – it was harmless fun

At school it was the same but the line was drawn a lot closer and we knew that stepping over it was not a very smart move. We'd sit at our desk in lines (unlike today) because it was orderly and disciplined. If told to "be quiet" we would, or else (unlike today), violence and bullying was virtually unheard of (unlike today) and the occasional playground fight was a rarity, even in the East End of London!

Perhaps it's because of this shift in the nature and established boundaries of upbringing that has caused a collapse in acceptable behavioural standards in today's teenagers and adults.

Those fundamental benchmarks that we learned as kids of having basic consideration for others and not causing stress, financial loss, bullying, physical violence or criminal damage are now pretty thin on the ground and that all-important imaginary line that civilized folk don't cross has almost disappeared.

Violence on many of our streets has become part and parcel of our culture and knife crime, shootings, drug rings, muggings, steaming gangs on the trains and buses are common occurrences and certainly as bad as some areas of New York are perceived.

I witnessed one disgraceful example of this total lack of civilized behaviour on the London Underground in the busy rush hour of the Central Line.

As I walked along the crowded connecting tunnel, a few yards ahead of me was a blind man skillfully working his way to his next platform tapping his white stick against the wall. Most people gave him a respectful wide berth although I noticed 2 or 3 impatient faces whose journey to the Bakerloo Line platform was now going to take at least three seconds longer.

Suddenly, three kids (2 boys and a girl aged perhaps 11 or 12 years old) barged past me from behind, saw the blind man and proceeded to do something that completely took my breath away – they started to play with him by jumping up and fanning their hands in front of his eyes!

The man could obviously hear and feel them, and perhaps even vaguely see them and stopped still for a few seconds until I, and a couple of others in the crowd, screamed angrily at these three little horrors who ran off laughing and swearing.

This shocking display of inhumanity would NEVER have happened when I was a kid but IF it did those miserable beings would have been grabbed roughly by an angry crowd, probably have been given a few hard slaps and then dragged bodily up to a waiting police car. But not today.

The lack of discipline and subsequent lack of any fearful deterrent has to be core to this increasingly dangerous situation. There's many a liberal voice who lectures us of the root causes of crime and anti-social behaviour (and they may well have a good case) but cause, deterrent and punishment are 3 very different objectives to examine and should be kept well apart.

If a lion is on the loose in Putney High Street it's rather important to do something about it rather quickly before it kills someone, such as restrain it with a dart or, if necessary, kill it, and it isn't the time to discuss who left the gate open or whether it's angry because it's missing its mate or whether it should be caged in the first place.

Sadly, our generally excellent police force is, ironically, hand-cuffed by a mountain of bureaucracy, paperwork, targets and nonsense legal restrictions; our prisons are now busting at the seams and our courts are often administered by unqualified amateur magistrates (I know some personally) or ageing, out-of-touch judges or are hampered by pathetic sentencing powers and quick custodial release schemes.

Many life sentences are automatically assessed at the trial as being a certain length (i.e. 18 years) and some are then immediately halved by law because the prisoner is considered by some invisible, amateur, unqualified parole board as being non-violent.

Young men are arrested daily in London for being in possession of a knife, a serious offensive weapon that can only have one use, and are subsequently fined just £10, but possibly the most disturbing new attitude that is now openly present in Britain's policing and judiciary systems is the bias of consideration towards the wrongdoer rather than the victim – and it's rife!

In this crazy new world if you are physically attacked and you retaliate to defend yourself YOU could be arrested for assault. If you try to restrain a burglar (and you need to be a tad physical as they tend to not sit still while you call the police) YOU can be arrested for assault and illegal imprisonment.

Not that many years ago, if a few young yobs were sitting on your wall at the front of your house, being noisy, peeing up your bricks and being generally disruptive you'd probably go outside to remonstrate with them and tell them to clear off, perhaps even with the odd clip round the ear.

Today, not only would such action find you in deep trouble with the police (that's YOU, not the yobs who the police tell politely to move on) but it can also be extremely dangerous and there have been 2 almost identical cases in the last year where innocent, stressed out, end of their tether middle aged dads have been killed because of their actions.

We've also had the recent horrific story of the tragic mother whose family had been regularly abused by neighboring teenagers and had contacted the police for help 32 times but to no avail. She had had enough and ended her life, and that of her disabled daughter, in a fume-filled car.

The police did nothing because it was too time-consuming and at the time, seemingly, no actual crime had been committed (sic) and therefore there was no successful tick to put in one of those important target boxes.

The Government naturally disagrees with these statements and regularly tells us that crime has been reduced by 40%, violent crime in down 25%, criminal damage is down 30% and the success rate on crime solving is up 40%.

Having spoken to many a policeman or policewoman, magistrate or solicitor, having spent a great deal of time researching this subject and spent a great many years in the advertising world surrounded by flaky demographic measurements and suspect research figures I'm quite sure that their claims are utter nonsense, that they don't appear to live in the real world and that their proud boasts are merely political waffle.

Facts are facts, but statistics can be whatever you want them to be.

Some crime figures are allegedly down; because the types of crime are repositioned (i.e. domestic violence is on a different list!); because a great deal of crime is simply no longer reported (there's far too much paperwork to bother) and because crime targets have maximums as well as minimums (so the figures may become deliberately distorted to enable progressive success next year!).

Amazingly, between 2000 and 2008, 2.7 million offenders were let off with a police caution rather than actually charged with a criminal offence. Now I suspect that made a huge dent in the 'official' crime figures! Crime solving figures are up because thousands of obviously solvable, but totally irrelevant soft crimes are created so that they can be instantly solved and added to the bigger 'solved crime' statistics.

These include heinous offences such as a 10-year old who was arrested and kept in a police cell for 3 hours for racially abusing a school friend who was apparently totally unaware of any such abuse (it seems he called him 'Bin Laden') until an interfering school assistant stuck her meddlesome nose in (note, not even a qualified teacher!).

The result? Two very confused school kids (now with Criminal Records), 4 angry, equally confused parents, a few thousand pounds of wasted taxpayer's money with police and court time, one bumptious, totally pleased with herself school assistant who now believes her actions were fully justified because of the outcome and, most importantly, one big extra tick in that all important Solved Crimes box!

And there are even worse crimes that demand instant action – such as putting your rubbish in the wrong wheelie bin!

The Defence rests.

THE MYSTERY OF MODERN EDUCATION

I'm quite sure I'm not alone and I bet this has crossed your mind often over the last few years.

Has our education system been dumbed down?

This is a rather emotive argument you'll hear bumbling on in your newspapers and TV programmes and quite frankly I'm really not sure (that's for professional academics and educationalists to answer) but there are certainly a few very worrying factors that bring the entire GCSE success story into question.

To put this into context, the proportion of pupils who have passed A-levels in the year end 2009 has risen to an extraordinary 97% (yes, that's 97%!) and I suspect that the only way anyone could fail is if they were either totally illiterate or in prison.

The initial answer to this strange scenario lies with the schools who, as we all now know, obtain their annual funding and budgets on the basis of their results and therefore it's essential to them that those results are at least as good as the previous year, but preferably even better to push them up the league tables.

This naturally has an enormous affect on the way an individual school addresses the annual examination and curriculum decision process even though technically the results are supposed to be out of their hands.

How strange it is that the pass rate on A-levels has risen for the 28th consecutive year, which makes little sense, and to quote senior academic Alan Smithers (Professor of Education at the University of Buckingham) "If you are working to a fixed standard you'd expect the pass rate to remain about the same. However with A-levels you see a built-in inflation and it's becoming easier and easier to get the top grades"

The second fairly recent ingredient of much concern is the allowance for students to 're-sit' specific sections of exams if they fail – so they can basically take the same exam again (whether written or course work) and put right what was wrong. Amazing!

So it appears far more difficult, and certainly rarer, to fail.

The third, and perhaps most important, element of this strange affair comes in 2 parts.

1) The majority of A-Level assessment is now taken on 'course' work throughout the year and not via the dreaded, old-fashioned written exam.

2) The Internet.

I don't think I need to elaborate on that – the implications are there for all to see and whilst the Internet is an extraordinary educational tool, its ease of usage leaves it open to abuse and students can find information too quickly and without actually reading it, analysing it or absorbing it. Certainly they no longer 'investigate', surely the basis of all worthwhile education.

I knew personally a 14 year old who produced his entire evening's homework, being part of his year's 'course' work, in about 15 minutes by literally copying an entire document from the web. Clever, but stupid!

This worrying concoction of concerns does bring the whole Secondary school education system into question and it seems that both Government and Education institutions are using our school kids for their own manipulative political ends - and ultimately it's the school kids who will lose out as they venture into the big world with a very different distorted view of their own abilities.

This week, an army of literary luminaries including Joanna Trollope, Nick Hornby and Andrew Motion, the Poet Laureate, delivered a letter to Downing Street signed by 545 writers urging The Prime Minister to confront Britain's childhood illiteracy.

The Government regularly applauds (and uses for political mileage) the alleged success of our Education system and insinuates that such a problem barely exists yet their own official and it seems secret statistics show that one in five 11-year-olds leaving primary school is unable to read to the minimum standard for that age group.

So the next time you're impressed by some bright young school leaver who has just received 10 passes (4 of them A+) ask them "what is the capital of Egypt?"

Most wouldn't have a clue.

THE NONSENCE OF RACE & IMMIGRATION

Perhaps the most explosive, provocative and dangerous subject in Britain today.

Race together with religion, immigration and sectarianism probably cause more angry debates, screaming arguments, demonstrations, fights and even deaths than any other subject and I have a pessimistic belief that we are sitting on a powder keg of trouble.

However, before delving deeper into this highly volatile issue we should look at a few basic facts that are highly relevant to any assumption or argument.

1: Britain is only a small country. We are only the 78th largest country in the world and yet we are now the 22nd most densely populated. This fast-increasing imbalance cannot occur without having a massive affect on our socioeconomic structure and puts a huge strain on our employment, housing, public services, environment, quality of life – and tolerance.

Our population has now swelled to over 62 million, mostly of course crammed into our cities and it's increasing at an alarming rate…and an excessively over-crowded house can only lead to one outcome.

And that means trouble, with a capital R.

2: Britain has always welcomed immigration and have been proud of it. Since the country began we've had a stream of uninvited guests who have set up permanent homes; the mysterious Picts, the Austrian Celts, the Germanic Angles and Saxons, the Italian Romans, the Scandinavian Vikings and the most recent bunch being the Gaulish Normans who brought with them not only their French tongue but also large contingent of Jews who settled in the country.

Admittedly, in 1290 they were all expelled by King Edward I but were readmitted by Oliver Cromwell. The Jewish settlements were slowly established, were expanded hugely by the influx of refugees in the 1930s escaping the horrors of Nazi Germany and subsequently became a major influence within our community.

The UK is also home to Europe's largest Chinese community mainly derived from the former British colonies of Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong, and in the 1950s onwards there has been a constant influx of peoples from the Commonwealth countries of African, Caribbean and Asian origins.

This controlled mix caused little harm to our communities and actually, eventually, served to enrich our country with a more diverse and interesting culture, but immigration has to evolve gradually to allow communities to integrate, understand, compromise and appreciate each other.

If it happens too quickly and too extensively, those different people become increasingly unwelcome and if history has taught us anything over the centuries it is that allowing this dangerous pattern to continue can easily lead to unease, then hatred and then worse!

3. Britain is not especially racist. We appear to be inundated with endless claims of racism (whatever that means) within our local communities, our press and TV, police forces and all sectors of employment and yet I believe that Britain remains one of those most racially and religiously tolerant nations on the planet.

Other than the madness and sadness of Northern Ireland, we have always had a fairly altruistic respect and understanding for other races, creeds and beliefs and we are way down the metaphoric world league of racist societies.

African tribes were in racial conflict long before the Colonial powers arrived from white Europe; the Hindu and Muslim warlord Princes of pre-Raj India thought little of large scale mass murder on race or religious grounds and even in recent years we have seen the horrors of ethnic cleansing and genocide in Cambodia, Iraq, Serbia, Kenya, Darfur, Rwanda and, of course, Nazi Germany.

This just wouldn't happen in Cheltenham.

Even today, most of Eastern Europe is institutionally racist (as every travelling black footballer will agree) and even supposedly civilized countries such as Spain and Italy are exceptionally protective of their national individuality.

I live in a multi-cultural area of London and strangely, the only offensive racism that I have seen in the UK had come from some surprising quarters and I have personally witnessed some pure race hatred.

A few years ago, a young female neighbour told me that she had just had a screaming argument with another neighbour who had sworn abuse at her. Being neighbourly I confronted the offensive family at their front door to insist that they apologize to my young female friend.

Another screaming argument ensued and, most disturbingly, my young female friend raged over my shoulder "why don't you **** off back home you ****ing niggers"

Gracious.

However, the relevant point here is that my young, female friend was an Indian Hindu and her racial targets were Sri Lankan Muslims – and I thought her use of the word 'nigger' was quite amusing as well as shocking.

Endemic race hatred is fairly common in surprising areas and generally speaking Caribbeans do not like Africans (particularly North Africans), Indians do not like Pakistanis, Eastern Europe is riddled with interracial hate and most Turkish and Greek Cypriots detest each other.

So what's the problem in Britain?

Firstly, I believe that few people accept or understand the true meanings of those taboo words – racism, discrimination, bigotry, prejudice, apartheid, sectarianism etc.

People tend to block all these words into one big unsavory pot instead of attempting to distinguish the basic principles of sameness and difference.

The fact remains that since time began, birds of a feather tend to rather prefer flocking together, and the entire world of nature concurs with that except, it seems, a few homo sapiens. People DO like to live and socialize with their own kind, the same kind, with their own culture, religion and language because they are comfortable with it.

It's perfectly normal and has been the case in every country on the planet for thousands of years, but that doesn't mean to say that people shouldn't live beside, exist with, and even enjoy being and living with people who are racially or culturally different.

This does mean that if people who are different are to live happily together they need to learn, appreciate and, if necessary, tolerate each others differences.

It also means that 'racism' and 'discrimination' are perfectly acceptable words if you look at them in their original, innocent definitions.

Racism originally meant a belief that a person's race determines specific differences in human character or ability and discrimination means the act of making distinctions between people – possibly because of their race or religion.

Both words are perfectly agreeable until they are used offensively and abusively as they usually are in the modern world but it is a perfectly simple, innocent fact that all people ARE different (and thank God for that!) because of their race, nationality or religion and it does affect everyone physically, socially and culturally.

Sometimes these differences are attractive, sometimes quirky, sometimes interesting but sometimes unfortunately are highly disagreeable to others and as long as any disagreeable differences are truly inoffensive there's no reason to return the offence.

But when disagreeable differences DO offend then people naturally take umbrage and develop a perfectly understandable (but almost always wrong) dislike for that race or religion.

Governments and idealists believe that they it is possible to legislate against such attitudes which is both naïve and dangerously Orwellian unless that personal opinion becomes more sinister and involves intolerance, bigotry, prejudice and discriminatory actions, as opposed to thoughts.

That is very different. Everyone has a right to think and maybe even discuss, but no-one has a right to offend. Unfortunately, in today's Britain, far too often do people jump on the 'taking offence band wagon' for pathetic, often politically or even racially motivated reasons.

Secondly, immigration has spiraled madly out of control far beyond the acceptable parameters that I mentioned earlier and this is having such a destructive affect on our services, employment, environment and, importantly, attitude.

Since 1980, we now have another £6m people crammed into our cities and current figures show a future net immigration of 250,000 per year; 1 in 4 new babies in Britain are born to non-British parents; many schools in our inner cities now have English as a second language. It's too much, too many and too quickly.

In London, one third of all the population are now immigrants and half of all new babies are born to foreign mothers. In 1997, the Labour's Manifesto stated that "every country must have firm controls over immigration and Britain is no exception" and forecast future net figures as 13,000 per year.

Within 4 years, the net figures had rocketed to over 150,000 and they quickly revised their stance to "as our economy changes and expands, so our rules on immigration need to reflect the need to meet skills shortages"

Let's make it up as we go along.

This ludicrous lack of any competent, considered policy has had a monumental affect on our socioeconomic position and more worrying has created huge and extremely dangerous attitudinal changes within our communities.

Many of the indigenous population now hold dangerous resentment towards all new immigrants and the alarming repercussions are that the same attitude then becomes blanketed towards all other non-indigenous people, however long they may have been in this country.

Even third and fourth generation immigrants who have happily settled here many years ago (and are considered British) begin to develop the same resentment towards the recent influx of East Europeans and non-EU peoples because they can foresee the problems that they will cause them, and far more seriously we have 2nd generation Muslims who have failed to integrate and are filled with hatred for this country.

Actions have to be taken quickly to protect this country, but also to protect the now virtually indigenous immigrants.

Thirdly, we have in the UK perhaps the softest border control, the weakest immigration systems and the most generous social services structure in the world.

Approximately 20,000 people are caught attempting to enter the UK every year at the Port of Dover alone and there are naturally no figures available of how many actually get through. These failed aliens are carefully removed, smiling, from the incoming trucks and are shunted back to the camps in Calais only to keep trying until they eventually succeed.

And whatever their status, EU citizens, Asylum seekers, Economic migrants or simply illegal immigrants, once in the UK they are presented with ridiculously generous financial, health and housing help making us the most attractive country on Earth.

If caught and arrested as an illegal immigrant on British soil, they are usually bailed and released and (surprise, surprise) are never seen again.

It is estimated that there are now over 1,000,000 illegal immigrants in the UK.

Whatever your attitude towards immigration, race, religion or whatever your thoughts about the fundamental structure of a society, this menacing situation cannot continue without serious repercussions.

THE DEATH OF COMMONSENSE

Fortunately, many of the examples of 'The Death of Commonsense' are amusing tabloid fodder, but behind the daftness are many very alarming issues – and a touch of irony, as 'common' sense is becoming extremely rare.

The perpetrators of this are the three new police services we have in the UK, and they are - the Health & Safety Police, the Politically Correct Police and the Human Rights Police.

The Health & Safety Police tell us that we may no longer have doggy bags at restaurants, that we cannot change a light bulb in a work place without building a huge construction of scaffolding, that teachers should now wear earmuffs when supervising kids playing musical instruments, that gravestones should be laid flat unless they fall over and hurt someone.

They tell us that whole areas of public woodland have to be closed in case someone falls down a rabbit hole, that children cannot play conkers anymore without protective gloves and goggles and are also banned from climbing trees, and that all park benches must now be 17.75" high costing nearly £500,000 nationwide (note the use of 'metric' Imperial measurement - sic)

And if these sound rather barmy, there was a case last year where Festival bunting was ordered to be taken DOWN because it was apparently erected without the correct use of scaffolding or powered ladder cages and the man erecting them could have been injured when he was putting them UP.

Hysterically, the same man took them down – using a ladder.

Far more seriously is a current story of 2 policewomen who have recently both had babies and have organized their shifts so that they can each look after their 2 little ones while the other is working. Complete commonsense.

However, the H & R Police have now banned them from this practice as, it seems, neither of them are officially approved child minders which essentially would need to include a CRB check (Criminal Records Bureau).

This will not only cost them both a great deal in child-minding costs at official crèches but will also have extraordinary knock-on implications to the general common or garden babysitting world. Grandparents beware!

Sadly, new, farcical Health and Safety regulations can also have devastating results and it was only last year that a young boy drowned in a fairly shallow pond as two Community Police looked on, refusing to dive in and save the poor lad because it was against regulations and they had not been officially trained.

The Politically Correct Police tell us that today; we are banned from having personal opinions if they are opposed to the official line of thought and importantly the guidelines as to these rules are both flaky and draconian.

The most dangerous areas are Sexism, Ageism, Paedophilia, Homophobia and Xenophobia – and all of these issues are either wrong, extremely wrong or totally detestable but the dreadful danger in modern PC Britain is in being unjustly labeled because of some pathetic, insane, institutionalized witch-hunt.

Political Correctness puts the fear of God into any employer who dares to NOT select an interviewee who may consider that they haven't been selected because of their sex, colour, age or sexual leaning, irrelevant of their possible total inexperience and the same applies to shopkeepers, landlords and publicans.

We have seen St George's events banned because it may offend someone; Christmas banned because it may offend someone, Crucifixes banned because they may offend someone and National stickers banned from cars because…they may offend someone.

And the unbelievable Warwickshire Police have just issued a guideline handbook called 'Policing our Communities' instructing their staff to avoid using words such as 'evening' and 'afternoon' (amongst many others) because these words may have different meanings to different cultures and may confuse or offend them.

Blimey. Dixon of Dock Green will be turning in his grave.

The PC brigade seems to cling to any faint whiff of wrongdoing even if (and it so often is) totally innocent and they often hammer away at a situation until they get a result, often meaning a conviction.

A serious and sinister example of this was in 1987 when a certain Dr Marietta Higgs decided that 121 children in the Cleveland area had all been sexually abused.

The local medical profession, social workers and the police closed ranks and all 121 of these children were taken from their homes and placed into anonymous care.

The specific testing and diagnosis made by Dr Higgs was ultimately proved to be without foundation, but it was too late. It had already destroyed lives, damaged families forever and many of these frightened children were never returned to their families.

In view of this, many adults are today fearful of having any contact at all with children because of the danger of being misunderstood and indeed teachers are now forbidden to even touch pupils.

The Human Rights Police are possibly the most disturbing of the lot as it has a destructive affect on every aspect of Law & Order and protective legislation.

A young girl witnessed a burglary at a dog sanctuary and could easily identify the criminal by a large, red birthmark on his face – but at the subsequent identity parade she was told that the police would refuse let her see the mark or take it into account because it infringed his Human Rights.

The radical cleric Abu Qatada has been branded a threat to National Security by both Scotland Yard and MI5, yet he is allowed to live openly on hefty State Benefits because otherwise it infringed his Human Rights.

Fridoon Sadiqi, an illegal immigrant from Afghanistan arrived in Britain with a fake passport. He was interviewed by UK Border Police who refused him entry.

He applied for discretionary leave to remain in the UK and while his appeal was being considered (which was refused) he was kept at an immigration detention centre for three weeks. He was released on bail and allowed to stay in the UK only while a second appeal was being considered and yet has remained here for 4 years, illegally.

He is now seeking £150,000 damages, plus costs, alleging he was unlawfully arrested and unlawfully 'imprisoned' for three weeks which caused him stress, depression and infringed his Human Rights.

There are literally thousands of stories such as these happening yearly in the UK and we are worryingly at the mercy of the European Convention of Human Rights, latterly, The Human Rights Act, 1998, an excellent institution devised just after the World War II to counter torture, slavery and inhuman activities – NOT to avoid prosecution of a criminal offence NOR to avoid deportation as an illegal immigrant NOR to extort money from a Government body.

It is regularly used and abused.

SO WHAT'S TO BLAME FOR ALL THIS?

Before we can attempt to answer that we need to firstly accept that the problems exist and that the statements I've made are accurate - and I've little doubt that they are because, as I pointed out at the beginning, they're very largely factual rather than opinion and can be easily verified.

Ironically, if we disagree with this sad assumption of our country then perhaps that may only acknowledge the basic principle of this picture in that our own normal acceptability of standards have been eroded slowly over the years.

I do know that 40 years ago Britain was a powerful, self-sufficient industrial and agricultural nation – and that has almost all but gone.

I do know that 40 years ago Britain was renowned for good manners throughout the world – and that has all but gone.

I do know that our policing and judiciary systems were once revered throughout the world and used as templates for dozens of other countries and this esteem has now all but gone.

I do know that our education systems were once second to none and were universally respected, but this is now certainly no longer the case.

I do know that we once welcomed immigrants from many countries who came to the UK searching for a better life – and that happy existence is now under threat.

I do know that once upon a time in Britain, commonsense generally prevailed – and that has certainly almost disappeared.

And the reasons we are in this disturbing situation are, I suspect, complex and many and whilst I have observed all these increasingly alarming problems I very much doubt that I am qualified to suggest definitive actions to resolve them – but all the following factors, all highly controversial, have more than likely had a part to play.

Materialism. Just after the last World War, in the 1950s, there was a major shift in our society from the traditions of old. The war was over (I wasn't there, I hasten to add) at great expense and there was a brave new world ahead of peace and prosperity.

As Britons began to rebuild their lives, more wealth appeared and there were many materialistic changes in our lives. More and more mothers began to work to earn extra funds for the family and all that extra income went towards very different items.

Income was spent not only on the traditional food, rent and clothing, but now we were beginning to see the availability of luxury items; televisions, furniture, and even holidays abroad. This change must have had a profound affect on the family values and the general attitude towards the priorities of our lives.

The TV. Often too easily blamed for a myriad of problems but I'm quite sure that the dreaded TV has had an immense affect on issues mentioned here.

Certainly, the TV opened up a world of materials, particularly through the American programmes which featured images of wealth that most people had never seen before; clothes, furniture, cars, washing machines, dishwashers and all manner of elegant food – and this all added to the new yearning for a better, more materialistic life.

Sadly, the TV also took our children (and adults for that matter) away from their usual studious world and book -reading became rarer, they stopped investigating and families stopped talking amongst themselves around the dinner table.

Far more dangerous, the TV has trivialised violence. It was once something that most people never saw and if they did it would shock them to the boots, but there is now so much gratuitous violence (verbal and physical) on our TVs that it's almost become accepted as normal, day-to-day behaviour.

The BBC soap Eastenders is a perfect example of this and is as irresponsible as it's possible to get as many viewers cannot differentiate between fiction and real life, believing that it's perfectly normal and acceptable to live and behave as in programmes such as this.

Thatcherism. I'm quite sure that Margaret has a lot to answer for but I also believe she had a bit of a bad press as many of the characteristics of Thatcherism existed way before 1979. Nevertheless she's got the blame for the lot. The ethos of Thatcherism was based on the American monetarist system to control inflation, a free market economy, entrepreneurism, the privatization of state-owned industries and a reduction of the Welfare State.

However, the huge by-product of this ideology was that all industry, whether that was manufacturing, agricultural, public services or (dare I say) mining became totally money-led which meant simply that if there was ever a way to make more or spend less – that way was taken.

This certainly had an influence on the slow collapse of industry as, increasingly, the option of cheaper foreign imports replaced the home grown or home made product and then, increasingly, British companies were sold off to foreign concerns.

Even our hospitals are suffering under a mountain of financial bureaucracy and the disappearance of matrons put our ward hygiene and sanitation at the mercy of amateurish outside contractors which has spawned a huge manifestation of MRSA and similar infections.

Immigration. As we have already seen, immigration has existed quite acceptably in this country for many decades and the influx during the 60s and 70s caused few problems. Indeed many would say it enriched our own culture.

However, this well-controlled, well-considered flow of immigrants has in recent years rocketed out of control with little regard for the affect this has had on our small island, on our indigenous population, on our existing immigrant communities, our environment, housing, employment, social & public services or our financial stability.

It has been allowed to drift along partly for mainly political ends, but also through pure imcompence and this has indirectly had a great affect of many of the other issues mentioned here.

The European Union. Ahh. Perhaps the most contentious issue of the lot, but it could be the most important influence on some of these troublesome matters.

Wherever you pin your flag regarding the EU, the fact remains that the British public were lied to at its initiation back in 1975 and since then there has been a whitewash of misinformation regarding the advantages of membership.

I'm quite sure that Britain is being slowly sucked into a giant grey Eurostate within which we will have little or no say over our national individuality, business, borders or social structure.

Having said that, It's quite clear that the EU has already had an immense affect on the state of our industries (all those previously mentioned) our laws, immigration and all the areas of non-commonsense (also previously mentioned).

Political Targets. Throughout our society, many of our services are now shackled by the necessity to achieve targets, whether that's schools, the police, hospitals and even the ambulance service.

They receive their funding totally dependent on their ability to hit those targets and this of course has a massive influence on that services effectiveness within its field and is often immensely detrimental to our society.

I have already mentioned the nonsense of police targets which allows crimes to be repositioned onto other lists, some crimes cease to be crimes, some minor actions suddenly become crimes and many crimes are simply not registered.

Also, I know of a cancer unit in a major hospital that receives its annual funding on the basis of patients in beds. Note, not the number of patients or patients cured, but the number of patients that have been admitted to a bed – and the result is that a patient's stay is kept to an absolute minimum to increase throughput of patients in beds.

Dangerous nonsense.

Britishness. This is a mixture of apathy and shyness. It is a British trait that we simply don't complain, don't demonstrate, don't let others (i.e. Government) really know how we feel.

About 20 years ago, the oil industry in America attempted to change their pumps to metrification to fall in line with the rest of the world (or most of it). The American public didn't approve and so they boycotted the gas stations that showed gas in litres. Within weeks the plan was shelved and to this day, gas in the US is sold in gallons.

In France, if ever there is an industrial problem they demonstrate. Not only that, but the local public aid and abet the strikers, and the police also help by turning a blind eye to any obstructive behaviour.

This assertiveness to make themselves heard is fairly common throughout the world, but in the UK we react very differently, quietly, invisibly (except perhaps in pubs and over the dinner table) and because of this our society slowly and secretly changes even though we may be privately furious.

There was a pretty extensive poll regarding the EU Lisbon Treaty and it seems that 81% of the population wanted a referendum on the issue – and it simply didn't happen. In most countries on this planet that would either bring a Government to its knees or cause a revolution.

Democracy. I had an interesting conversation with a friend recently regarding many of these issues and his prognosis was quite surprising in that he blamed most of this decline on democracy itself. Somewhat extreme I thought.

However, on reflection he had a point in that our own British version of democracy does provide some serious obstacles in the health and success of society.

Firstly, we have the very real issue of power constantly changing every few years, meaning that any long-term foundation policies may well be totally overturned at every change of Government.

Political parties are constantly at each other's throats, disagreeing with virtually every policy, every piece of legislation or law that has been ratified during their period of office – and as soon as the power swings across the House all those agreed decisions need to be un-ratified, partly to save face because they've been extremely vocal about it for a few years, but also because it's now embedded in their Manifesto.

This constant tooing and froing of rules, laws and legislation can hardly be healthy.

Secondly, we all know that Government decision-making often has little to do with the good of the country, but more to do with Party Politics and political mileage.

Speeches are made and legislation is often created for political ends and not for the health of our society (it's extraordinary how many attractive promises are made by all parties immediately prior to a General Election).

IS IT ALL TOO LATE TO MEND?

I'm sure there are some who will believe that this sorry picture of our country that I have painted here is a pessimistic over-reaction judgment brought about by possibly reading too many Daily Mail articles, or having had too many wine-drenched dinner party debates.

I'm also sure that there are many who would believe that my assumptions are not only correct but perhaps don't venture far enough and in recent times I have personally heard many far more damning appraisals and angry condemnations of our country and some terrifyingly extremist suggestions.

I am certainly sure that all the issues here are disturbingly accurate and are like invisible diseases that are slowly eroding our society - the key word being slowly so that you may not be aware of the erosion until you review the whole sad picture over the last few decades.

There is still good to be found but sadly it's now the exception rather than the rule, which is the overwhelming issue in that what was once accepted as the norm is now so noticeable because it's so rare.

And is it too late the mend?

I've said my piece – you tell me!

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MY VICTOR MELDREWISMS - 2008