MANNERS MORALS AND STANDARDS

The ways in which we live together in communities and the manners by which we treat each other are the result of and sometimes the source of our ideas of right and wrong. How our rulers act is particularly important to our free way of life. Here's where the social commentators and other students of humanity itself cast an eye over us and those in power.


Civitas. The Institute for the Study of Civil Society. They provide solutions for social problems, especially in educational excellence in a wide range of academic studies and through offering educational advice, speakers and materials for schools, particularly about the European Union, and provide factual information, advice, analysis and debate. They also help rescue schools and have established a model school of their own. Welfare and moral reformers: they seek and provide answers to problems that beset our society today. Real spirit of Wilberforce stuff.
Read about them here.
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The New English Review examines society, art, media and culture and stands up for what is good and great and shows up what is squalid, mean, and destructive. There are essays each month on culture and multiculturalism, religion and fanaticism, the way we live our lives and better yet the way we lived our lives, and is one host to the great Doctor Theodore Dalrymple, of whom more soon. A cultural magazine for the Third Millennium with its feet firmly rooted in the millennia that went before. A monthly treat and hard work for the serious lover of our country an =d our civilisation's true virtues. Read it here.
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Freedom is a diverse value in our society and it has many uses.
One of the things that people can do with freedom is to hurt other people.
Mediawatch-UK monitors how the media go about their business and provides campaigning platforms to oppose what they consider to be harmful, indecent, or immoral uses of the media. Here they are in their own words:
Mediawatch-UK provides an independent voice for those concerned about issues of taste and decency in the media. We have an established reputation for principled protest, informed comment and reliable research. We publish newsletters, reports on the portrayal of violence, bad language and sexual conduct, briefings on film classification, content regulation and the public interest.
Visit their site and see what they are doing here.
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Here's our post on the Edinburgh 'gay adoption' row - which has very serious implications for the family in this country and seems to be a prime facia case of the over-mighty state attacking on of our most important institutions.
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Manners maketh the man.
Mediawatch-uk are running a campaign to ask the Prime Minister to influence Ofcom, the film and TV regulator to prevail on the entertainment media to take unnecessary swearing from their productions.
The great humanitarian campaigns of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to turn Britain’s cities from brutal, impoverished, gin-soaked, child-prostituting, slave-trading hell-holes involved a conscious effort to gentle the condition; that is to make more polite and considerate as well as safer and more comfortable, of the poor.
The reformers usually started with the powerful and the rich; in those days the peerage, gentry and the highest ranks of the middle class, and persuaded them to lead by example to such an extent that Britain became known as the politest and also one of the safest places to live on the planet.
All that has been under attack for decades as stultifying to individual spirits and as methods of class control. ‘Realistic’ language and ‘relevant’ film, drama and soap operas have helped to coarsen and dull the sense of decency of millions – and even the most progressive of teachers find it necessary to blame our nation’s educational and public order decline on loutish and ignorant parents.
From the politest nation on Earth to the terrors of tourist resorts, nightclubs, and football stadiums worldwide; that’s where progressive language codes have helped to get us, with disrespect for self, for others and for all deep and abiding morality growing amongst rich and poor alike. Now the brutality, poverty, addiction and even child prostitution are back.
It’s just not so much fun any more.
People live by symbols and words are the commonest of symbols that we encounter every day. I think our country would be better behaved and safer if more of us respected our language and our culture and our neighbours. So let’s ask today’s rich and powerful – government and the entertainments industry - to lead by example as their aristocratic predecessors did and choose to use their freedom of speech to promote a gentler, more respectful use of language. Sometimes, the great virtue of freedom is that you can choose NOT to do something.
It’s not as if the media approve of the realistic use of every single word in the dictionary, now is it?

The petition is here.

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