Another incident that the Ross-Brand affair brought to my mind happened back around August/September 2001. Taunton is like many other towns - it has traffic lanes that can merge unexpectedly - a motorist’s frustration. It was a baking hot day and all car windows were down as we stopped and started, slowly making our way from Mary Street outbound towards Junction 25. At the traffic lights one can turn left from the inside lane into Taunton town centre or follow the dual lane to the right outbound. That is where it took place. On turning right the inside lane is blocked by permitted parking. As were others, a senior citizen on the inside lane was trying to merge with the outside lane back into the flow of slow moving traffic. A young couple in the outside lane took issue and expletives filled the airways through the neighbouring car windows of both directions. The aggressive language as foul as they could make was accompanied by equally intimidating physical gestures. If we go by stories told it is a daily occurrence in many places. The public didn’t have to come to the rescue - it sorted itself out as the traffic moved on. It wasn’t the first time for me to witness an ugly scene in traffic - but what made it more ugly and memorable for me was not that I was unused to hearing or seeing such behaviour - vulgarities expressed publicly by both genders in the younger generation seem not be unusual these days. This incident lodged itself in my memory bank because of what I saw in back seats of the car - two youngsters, no more than primary age, as animated as their parents were in the front!
I am sure there are many of us who cringe and shudder and even fear at much of what is now considered accepted norms of behaviour in much of the younger generation in the age in which we now live. But can we say it has improved our lot in life? Does it contribute to a better society? And what of the next generation - the generation represented by those youngsters in the back of that car - what are we to expect future society to be like? In reading the Brand/Ross affair I couldn’t help noticing comments like this one in The Times:
“But what about a late-night show on the publicly funded BBC? According to Niri Shan, head of the media group at Taylor Wessing, the key issue is whether the broadcast would be likely to deprave or corrupt the audience. “I don’t think that the police would be interested,” he says. All right, some of the comments would be regarded as offensive to most people over 65. But would they have been listening?”
But the public were alerted by the media, and alarmed by it. 27,000 complaints to BBC must have been a record. And heads did roll. But why would a publicly funded BBC want to send something over the airways, whatever time of the day or night, that is in itself depraved - and yes, depraving. And if we find it humourous, might that be where we are ‘progressing’ as society - so when patience snaps in any kind of situation - it is OK to behave like that couple in the car, role modelling their behaviour to their primary aged kids?
