- Joined
- 18 Jan 07
- Moves
- 12477
Originally posted by Pianoman1Certainly. It would get you back to the crime rates of those years. Which were... oh, yeah, worse.
Part of the "civilizing" of our society has resulted in a softening of our moral fibre. Cut the bollocks off all sex offenders, a life for a life for all murderers, public floggings for all thieves and petty criminals, take the TV's, computers, games consoles out of prisons, 20 years in prison means 20 years in prison, deport all foreigners who refuse to r ...[text shortened]... e above is, of course, impractical and uncivilized, but, by heck, it would achieve something!
Sorry, but the statistics are not in favour of your argument. We don't have more murders than we used to. Not in my country, not in yours. We just hear about more of them.
Part of that is because back then, it was only a murder worth reporting on when the victim had more than £1000 to his name, and that's when £1000 was real money. If the murder victim was only a poor slob, it wasn't worth the column inches. (If the victim was poor and the perpetrator had over £1000, of course, it frequently wasn't a murder in the first place. Serves the yobbo right for getting in Mr. Moneybags, esq.'s way.) A village brawl with several fatalities did not get reported - village brawls are just part of country bumpkin life, get used to it, you oik. One shooting - deadly or not - in Fleet Street would be all over every paper.
Another part is that we simply have more access to sensationalist media now. Back then, you had one red-top a day (and nobody read the Sun, the Torygraph, and the Daily Hate). Now, y0u have as many free papers as you want, and in between you get screamed at by Channel Thatmuch. And for all of them, fear, blood and hatred sell. They sell even more than sex, for newspapers at least (although for some, a bit of Page Three doesn't hurt, either).
Of course, there are other reasons as well. At least one of them is that dreadful lack of moral fibre - we don't shrug off death any more like we used to. But all of them boil down to this: we think there are more murders than there used to. When you look at the actual data, the opposite proves true. Thank heavens.
Richard
Originally posted by Shallow BlueI like your argument. Sounds unlikely enough to be true. Murder rate is probably down.
Certainly. It would get you back to the crime rates of those years. Which were... oh, yeah, worse.
Sorry, but the statistics are not in favour of your argument. We don't have more murders than we used to. Not in my country, not in yours. We just hear about more of them.
Part of that is because back then, it was only a murder worth reporting o ...[text shortened]... to. When you look at the actual data, the opposite proves true. Thank heavens.
Richard
Does that make us more civilised?
Yes, obviously.
Thanks
Originally posted by gareth cobbJust because we are not Somalia does not make us civilised. Somalia is probably the most depraved, savage and uncivilized country on the planet.
state in a democracy is hardly uncivilised.You are not living in somalia or been forced to do anything against your will.
There are degrees of civilization. Whereas I accept that no country is perfect, that there are rotten apples in every country (US troops urinating on dead Taleban is a case in point) there has to be some sort of yardstick to define civilization. Britain is clearly more civilised than Somalia, but the murder rate is appalling here, the behavior of pupils in many schools is inexcusable, the no work culture of living off the state is embarrassing, the obsession with fame is just wrong.
Until we reach a time when every cog in the machine is pulling its weight, when every animal instinct (no, not that one!) is subjugated, I don't think we can call ourselves a "civilised" society.