Having had a very lemony dinner, it reminded me of the lemons I met in Amalfi last year. These were being sold in one of the local green grocers. Amalfitan lemons are too big to hold comfortably in the hand but the feel of their knarled skins sends sparks of rapture through your body. Limone oose the twangiest, most sublime elixir of all the citrus fruits. It is said that the origin of the word lemon derives from the Sanskrit, nimbuka and came into European languages via Persian, limu. Terraces of lemon trees reach up to the heavens all around Amalfi. Walking the streets and climbing the salità, the salty coastal breezes are royal carriages for the seraphic scent of the lemon trees, their leaves, bark and fruit. Breathe in and golden light permeates every pore in your body; breathe out and you smile. Fruits of ecstacy and pleausre.
Lemons, Amalfi
Originally uploaded by courgettelawn.
Are you arguing that the people who grow old in their shells are just as anti-social as those who graffiti walls and smash windows? I’d make a distinction between those passively anti-social people (hell, I’m guilty of that at times) and those who are actively anti-social (not guilty!).
Imposing fines and evicting people is easier for the Government because they already have a system in place that allows them to do so. Implementing any of your suggestions means employing people or creating departments that don’t exist… more expense, more effort.
Giuliani showed in New York that an epidemic (in this case lack of respect and the resulting crime) can be reversed, can be “tipped”, by tinkering with the smallest details of the immediate environment. (See Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point”.) The “Broken Windows” theory of crime runs like this: if a window is broken and left un-repaired, people walking by will conclude that no-one cares and no-one is in charge. Soon more windows will be broken and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street sending a signal that anything goes.
So if you deal with the small crimes - the “quality of life” stuff (graffiti, public drunkenness, and yobs) - you’ll see a big change in crime figures and respect across the whole city. This is what happened in the mid-90s in Giuliani’s New York. It remains to be seen how Blair’s latest crusade will fair across an entire country. I suspect, sadly, that it’ll have little impact.
Gods forbid anyone should expend more effort!
Dealing with the “small crimes” as you refer to it should not just be about the eye-for-an-eye response implied by evictions and fines. Such things then just leach into other areas and so the displacement carries on and on. I don’t need to read a book to tell me this, I’m experiencing it at the moment. To attempt to eradicate such idiotic behaviour requires a change in attitude from those that govern and police us and a change in the way wrong-doers are dealt with. Do you really think a fine or eviction is going to change that person’s world-view? At worst it will make no difference (more money, more effort having been spent), at best it will leave those people without purpose and even more contempt for the world in which they live.
I just advocate more creativity in the solutions governments come up with. That doesn’t need new departments, just a different way of thinking. As for the so-callled ‘passive’ anti-socialites? Well, they can worry about the price of cheese in Asda. I don’t want to.
May your goats always yield good milk.
Respect must come from within, originating as self-respect. This can only be encouraged in others by those who already have it. Respect speaks (etymologically) of a facility to re-examine, to look at the world in varying ways.
I suspect the word Mr Blair meant to use is ‘deference’. This is a poor substitute for respect, a social ersatz frequently mistaken for the real thing by those who have not the eyes to see. Deference is about outward social compliance based, ultimately, on fear of punishment, and can manifest in people with no inward virtue.
Of course, deference can be enforced. To suppose that anyone - even a givernment - can compel respect, a self-cultivated inner humane virtue, is patently absurd.