PDQ Mobile wrote:We have using that as a criteria become more tolerant of litter, bad service, bad behaviour in public places, filthy public transport etc.
Admittedly my experience of such in the 1970s is limited by being a child then, but underground trains were covered in graffiti, dog mess on the streets and in recreational areas was omnipresent (I remember that well), and the first high-profile 'Keep Britain Tidy' campaigns started in the late 1960s and 1970s.
Bad service in institutions like British Rail and the GPO was endemic. My Dad still recalls with incredulity, just after BT was privatised, that he could get a new phone line put in in days rather than weeks.
Is behaviour really worse now? The below is often quoted but I'll quote it again:
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannise their teachers."
Socrates, 500 BC
PDQ Mobile wrote:The (homo) sexual side of things is perhaps more of a media phenomena than much else. Dominated as the media is by such.
Definitely not true. Society generally is tolerant of homosexuality, has no problem with people in positions of authority being homosexual or their children coming out. You only have to listen to any vox populi carried out in the 1970s compared to now.