The true cause of cultural nihilism and social disintegration in this country was Thatcher herself.

I am old enough to remember when the UK was a relatively orderly, crime-free country. All this came to an end in May 1979.

Viewed from the ivory towers of London, it might seem this way. However, a brief visit to Manchester, for instance, shows how much in the UK has improved since Labour came to power. This was a place ravaged by unemployment, crime and misery during the Thatcher years. Now it is virtualy unrecognisable : optimistic, thrusting, friendly. Much the same case could be made for Sheffield and Leeds. It is for this reason that the Tories are in electoral trouble, not because their leader has a bald head or coughs each time he tries to speak.

about 20 years ago, the labour party went through a dinosaur period - its only fair the tories should have to go through theirs. for the forseable future, the new tory party will be the libdems - the lord save us !

I must admit I hadn't noticed the dramatic improvements in Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield of which convert speaks. I hope he's not confusing a few new museums and galleries (some of which have closed like the music museum in Sheffield) and the gay zone of Canal Street with real social change. And Leeds city centre will be 'friendly' when hell freezes over.

Trouble is, Melanie, to reverse a tide of nihilism, cultural disintegration etc you need something to believe in, and to have a moral agenda you need a source for that morality. Where's that going to come from ?

It seems good liberals would basically like us to be Chriistians without the Christianity. But people don't work like that.

Perhaps the culture war theses of the Pat Buchanans and Victor Davis Hansons are correct, and maybe the years (say) 1850 to 1950 in England and the US will turn out to be exceptional ones, islands of liberal courtesy.

You certainly can't say that radical Islam is short on morality - or conviction.

Convert obviously grew up in a different North of England than I did!

Its absolutely true that the North was hit very hard during the Thatcher decade, but this was due to decades of union militancy and unrealistic socialist policies which sought to maintain old smoke-stack industrial sectors where our comparative advantage over other nations had mainly disappeared.

This was not helped by the militant character of many ambitious and grand-standing local polticians in big Northern cities who created an anti-business culture based on the precept that profit was theft. (I grew up in Sheffield, and let me tell you that David Blunkett was a very different hue of red in those days and did immense damage to the city during his reign there.)

For a long time after Thatcher fell from power, large tracts of the north were - and to some extent still are - in the grip of dinosuar socialism. It was the gradual realisation that such attitiudes have failed (and the departure of people like David Blunkett to higher things) which have helped foster a more enterprising climate in the big northern cities and conurbations.

"socialism destroyed as a global threat"? Huh? Communism destroyed ... maybe/maybe not. But socialism seeps through the walls and the pores of Britain, where the wage earners and wealth creators are viewed as committing crimes against humanity, and where class warrior Gordon Brown is approved of for trying to take their "ill gotten gains" away from them and give them to people who don't work for a living. It's not dead in France, either, where Jacques Chirac is regarded as a formidable rightist. In any normal country, he would be a regarded as a socialist.

Yes, Britain has no agenda of any kind. It is degenerate because they have allowed politicians to make it so. They have to get over the fear of being slagged off as racists if they don't want any more asylum seekers invading the country. How is it Britain held off far more organised and sophisticated invasions for over a thousand years, yet can't cope with a flood of self-seeking, greedy, third world illiterates? Why do the British fear to hold to account the thought fascists in Parliament and local councils and special interest group? British governments nowadays are cowed by the divisive politics of the socialists, who you say are no longer a threat. Trevor Phillips, the black head of the CRE, which I think stands for Committe for Racial Equality or something like that and is state-funded, displays a bust of Lenin in his office. Has he been told to get rid of it or get the hell out? Are you kidding?

Caroline,

The answer is quite simple really. A whole generation of people somehow got the impression that commercialism (ie. buying and selling things) was somehow vulgar. Competition in the market was held to be too naughty and something that was beyond the pale. Hence, a whole lot of useless people went into government employment and the bureaucracy swelled tenfold. These people need something to do, so they make themselves important by inventing a new morality (what we call PC) and trying to foist it on us.

Melanie,

The cry of "Nanny state" refers more I think to resisting stupid PC nostrums that run contrary to normal morality. Having said that, I think that we have to be careful not to pass laws that enforce good manners and morality, as these would be as useless as the PC laws that are currently on the statute book.

That is not to say that the ideas behind the law(what Judges call "public policy") should not be firmly based in Judeo-Christian morality. However, it is probably best to act negatively. Thus, it may be a good idea to phase out payments to single mothers, on the basis that such paymnets encourage women to become "brides of the state" and bring a load of socail problems in their wake.

There's nothing to gain and nothing to lose.

The best solution against abortions is education, not snipers.

People who do not think far enough ahead inevitably have worries near at hand.