We were unwise to scrap the old values

LET me say at the start that I am no angel and in the 1960s I was a young man, brought up with what some would call traditional values.

I did not think about them, they were there, many would say intrinsically across the nation. Many would not agree perhaps.

Halfway through the decade a Labour politician, the Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, in a media frenzy said that the “permissive society” was the civilised society.

I never agreed with him.

Over the years I watched as the last bastions of the old ways of taste and decency were ridiculed and slowly destroyed by the disciples of “anything goes”.

Many looked on horrified and thought when a Conservative government came in to being, things would change, But they did not. If anything, many things got worse – “look after yourself” is admirable but not to the detriment of others.

Morals changed, restraint disappeared. In my day at the cinema, the baddies mostly lost for the good of society. Not any more they don’t.

Then of course, came the internet and mobile phones and digital technology, so that our children can view the most terrible things day and night.

Those values that I and my peers were brought up with gave us such a good grounding morally, so that kindness and gentleness and love and, dare I say it, romance played a part in our lives. Not any more. What is in its place as our televisions spout out non-stop material that caters for anything and nothing?

Where are our children going to learn right and wrong, as some claim that we have no right to be offended? The traditional family is gone, respect for the police is dwindling. Every week we read of another knifing by our young ones. They are, to my mind, rudderless. Our young people, if they are lucky enough to have both parents in a world with a myriad of ideas with nothing concrete to hang on to, are frustrated.

No wonder there are so many mental health problems.

Howard Robinson

Ebbw Vale