Murphy's letter from Edinburgh

 

Self Disciplined Society

I was brought up in an age when we had a self disciplined society and where if you did something wrong there were many wise people who would give you a clip across the ear or a good talking too without a second thought if you gave them any impudence back.

This was in an age when you reached a certain age you did National Service - unless you were in a reserved occupation.  When I reached that age national service was over because the government of the day was cutting back on military spending in favour of SAD - Self Assured Destruction because of the cold war with the Eastern Block.

Part of those reviews were that national service was no longer required due to the types of weapons that were being developed.  Civil Defence was no longer required either and they were disbanded around about the same time which seemed to be a mistake at the time and probably still was given the times we are going through now.

National Service instilled discipline into the people called up to do it, and when they came back after their two years service they had a better understanding of the rules that a society needed to live by.  These were the people who created a self disciplined society and who had a better understanding of the country and the world that we live in.  They related their two years in the forces too the younger generations by being disciplined and passing on the discipline that they had learned.

Of course there were people who hated their national service, but in general the majority came out disciplined, skilled and with a better understanding of what was acceptable and what was not in the society that they lived in.  Because Britain had many bases abroad they could have ended up anywhere in the world learning about different cultures along with the skills that they picked up in their training.

Sadly we have lost all that and through the process we have become an undisciplined society where the experience of the older generations that did their national service is no longer passed down to the younger generation.  There is no one passing on the practice of their discipline to the next generation.

We have a generation of young people who know nothing about discipline because it has not been passed down from people who were conditioned into a disciplined society.  We often blame the young for many things that we took for granted in the years when national service was considered a way of life in this country.

No society can work properly unless they have a self disciplined society, and Britain lost that many years ago.  We then wonder why we live in a society where anything goes. Young people need hope if they are going to progress into what we consider the future knowing right from wrong and the types of behaviour that is expected from them.

Schooling and education have a large part to play in that along with proper guidance from the family.  But again the teachers hands are tied as to what they can and can't do. Sure there will be children who are difficult, and these are the children that need to be helped along in their journey through life.  Every child has some good in them but we as a society have to tap into their positives and negatives so that they grow up as a disciplined society.

Work is one of the main factors that is needed instead of the types of going nowhere courses that successive governments have been so intent on sending the younger generation onto to keep the unemployment figures down.

I know people who have done as many as three different courses with no outcome at the end of them.  They end back on the unemployment register with no job, and unless they have the chance to continue with the skills that have been taught, the course has been a total waste of time.  There has to be an outcome at the end of any training course so that people feel that what they did was worth the effort.

Course jumping does nothing for anyone unless they can continue with the skills that they have learned.  Going on another course that has nothing to do with the skills that they learned on the first course does nothing for the person being taught working skills - apart from manipulating the unemployment figures.

Britain has a lot of problems when it comes to a self disciplined society.  It also has a lot problems when it gets young people onto skills courses that offers no hope of a job at the end of it.

These are a few of the problems that need to be sorted by our government so that we can get back onto a more disciplined society.

Written by Andrew Murphy 14 June 2006

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