Member-only story
SOCIETY
Halfway to Hell in a Handcart of Hate
Even alliteration can’t save us now
My wife and I were in town yesterday. I say town, but it’s really little more than a village. Every year, though, the population grows as more housing estates encroach like an invading army.
As fast as they are built, they fill with urban upstarts relocating from the city and bringing trouble in their wake.
My wife needed a haircut, so we popped into a local salon, and I waited with her while the stylist did his thing. We got chatting with the stylist, as you do, and the subject inevitably moved onto the demise of society.
It’s a conversation we’re all accustomed to having these days.
It’s not just the big global issues like genocide, climate chaos and the looming threat of nuclear war. It’s also the smaller, everyday events that don’t even make it into the news any more but are no less chilling in their cumulative effects.
Things like the rise in stabbings and shootings and the general feeling that society is becoming more lawless.
The stylist was telling us that every evening, groups of school kids descend on the town square, shoplifting eggs from Sainsbury's and throwing them at shop fronts.
