Refreshing Western Society

4. Does it matter?

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For many people a study like this will set the alarm bells ringing.

Whether it matters or not may depend on your situation and your own view of ethics.
If you are comfortably off you may not care too much about the poor and deprived, though you may still be subject to crime and violence.
But if you do care because of your own ethical and moral values you must think that the way Society is going does matter.

Areas that may make you think that it does matter are:

Health Service.
One problem seems to be that it has been overtaken by medical developments so that more can always be done than can be afforded.
Others may be lack or money and mis-spending of funds that are available. Overall the need is a Government that understands and makes correct decisions and hospital managers who are competent.
An example of incompetent decisions is that if you live in Portsmouth or Southampton and want to be trained to be a midwife you have to go to Bournemouth every day for training! That could be a journey of 50 miles each way. We know of a 23 year old with a child of 4 in this situation. Maybe there are alternatives but if so she has not been told. No wonder there is a shortage of midwives. Does that matter?

Education.
The muddle here is mis-handling by government of bad behaviour in schools and too much paperwork for teachers. The bad behaviour should be tackled in the bringing up of children (dealt with in other articles here) and the solving of what to do with students who have to be banned from ordinary schools because they spoil the teaching of other students. There are not enough alternative ways of occupying these bad students. The paperwork problem is too be tackled by only asking teachers to produce essential paperwork. There is also the destructiveness of bad head teachers who make life impossible for their teachers. For all these reasons we know of teachers who have retired early, gone sick or left the profession. Does that matter?

Sex outside marriage.
We touched on this in article 1. The consequences of sex outside marriage include a huge amount of the problems of society.
It upsets the foundation of marriage and results in an increase in divorce, in children born outside the security of a father and mother and a stable home. Unwanted children are often born with the result of all the problems that teenagers have today. It also adds greatly to social security costs and demand on housing.
Sex has become a common subject in society which must increase sex outside marriage. The term Condom was never mentioned before Aids become a problem in the 1980s. The media has made capital (literally) by giving us a diet of sex, divorce, extra marital relationships. While there is virtually no censoring of the media they will continue to please their shareholders rather than work for the well-being of society.
Cohabiting, living together before marriage is a large part of this problem and more about that is at:
To a web site on cohabiting
That site says "The goal of this web site is to help couples build strong quality relationships that will grow into marriages lasting a lifetime. It's purpose is to
(1) detail the harmful effects of living together on the stability and satisfaction of relationships, in general, and marriage, specifically; and
(2) suggest ways to help minimize these adverse effects in order to have a successful marriage."
Return to article 1

Government.
Good Government must be much of the answer and that means the election of MPs and Ministers who will be honest and will make the right decisions. They say Hard Cases make bad law. Now lobbying by minorities make bad law. E.g. Feminists, Homosexuals, Immorality, Adulterers, business groups, the Media. MPs are allowed to be persuaded by the lobbyists against the will of their electors. Does that matter?

The Royal Navy.
There has always been an adultery problem in the Navy where wives of naval officers and ratings fear their husbands may be having sexual affairs when they are away. In order to make it easier for this to happen the Royal Navy now sends women to sea in naval ships. How do you think the naval wives feel about that? Speak to any Naval officer and see what they think about it! Does that matter? I believe women are to be given suitable equal opportunities with men but there are other considerations to be brought in including women not being so strong and all the sexual differences that raise many problems.

Destruction of the J. Lyons & Co Ltd group. A few years (AFTER!) I left the Company it got into difficulties and sold off it's assets and effectively closed down. City analysts had asked when this sleeping giant would wake up and make more profit. The directors panicked and made some bad decisions regarding overseas borrowing and investing overseas. Currency values turned against them and they lost a lot of money. The Company were actually doing very well, satisfying customers, staff & suppliers. The few shareholders may not have been satisfied but that did not matter because most of the investment was owned by the family directors. The erroneous idea being banded about was that if a company was not growing it was failing. This is just not true. A company can stay the same size, providing it moves with the times and J L was certainly doing that. They used the latest in technology, management, industrial relations, control systems. The panic was from outside and the directors could have ignored it and the Company would still be an integrated company instead of bits being taken over by others. It is a pity that this fallacy of 'you must grow to be stay in business' is so much accepted when it is not true.

Yes it does matter that Society's problems are tackled lest things get worse rather than better.

End of Article 4 ...... March 2002