There are many reasons for the litter, loutishness and violence on the streets, and one of them is the indifference of others, whether it is caused by a fatalistic sense that such things are somebody else's problems or old-fashioned laziness. None of the other bright ideas that are currently being proposed - Respect areas, yob control league tables, parenting programmes and so on - can work unless the public is, and feels, involved.The media reaction to the Home Office plan, a hurricane of whinge, neatly highlights the problem it needs to overcome Passive complaint has become the British disease. Because the political class lacks the nerve to tell the electorate to grow up, a general dissatisfaction with those thought to run our lives has become endemic. In pubs and at dinner parties, in newspapers and on pointless television programmes featuring semi-celebrities being grumpy, a low, nagging murmur of complaint can be heard. Its objects vary, but the subtext is always the same: someone else is to blame. The right to moan has become established as an assumed national privilege, and the more we huff and puff about the injustice of life, the less we do to resolve it ourselves.Not that a heightened sense of civic responsibility will be without its problems. More often than not, those who take action in the manner suggested by the Home Office are the wrong people, motivated by the wrong reasons.
A page in Monday's edition of my local newspaper, the Eastern Daily Press, contains two stories of proactive citizenship, neither of them entirely reassuring. A senior policeman in Suffolk has just released this message for the public: "If someone in your neighbourhood is driving a fancy car, wearing designer clothes, flashing their cash and apparently living beyond their means and you think they might be criminal, we want you to call and tell us."Above this open invitation to the region's sneaks and grasses, there is a story from across the border in Norfolk of a couple who have taken action so determinedly over the past nine years - over planning, the council audits, building controls, the integrity of council workers - that they have just been declared a public nuisance. Not one of their objections has been upheld, but dealing with them has been expensive - responding to just one of their many campaigns cost the local council £39,420 - and has occupied hundreds of working hours.It is a thin line between on the one hand taking action on behalf of your street, region or estate, and on the other, becoming a crazed serial complainer or reporting neighbours to the police on suspicion of having an inappropriately flashy car, but a campaign to remind each of us that we have an investment in where we live and that we cannot always turn to some nannying authority to make it better is rather brave and sensible.Ignoring the moaners and seeing it through, in the face of a negative media and with the unreliable support of an edgy, weakened Prime Minister, is likely to be a tough call for the Home Secretary. Perhaps those Bovver boots are going to be be useful after all.terblacker aol More from Terence Blacker. Sir Ian Blair has an odd sense of priorities. One of his first executive acts after taking over as Metropolitan Police Commissioner at the start of 2005 was to change the force's logo "Working for a safer London." Sir Ian was adamant that it be changed to "Working together for a safer London". One of his colleagues explained that Sir Ian's decision was principally motivated by the fact that "the old logo was not compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 because it was slightly italicised and it may have proved difficult to read for visually impaired people." While Sir Ian has a touching concern for those of us who have trouble reading the lettering on police cars as they hurtle through the capital, it amazed me at the time that he should actually believe that any of us care what self-preening slogan is printed on them: I believe I speak for all Londoners, whether hawk-eyed or profoundly myopic, when I say that the word POLICE in large capital letters is all we require. More from Dominic Lawson.
How to address poverty in Britain? The question is posed rarely in a public arena. Yet soon there will be a noisy debate as the main parties compete to come up with some convincing answers. Indeed, in terms of its symbolic importance I predict the debate over poverty will be more intense and highly charged than the vacuous clash over newly fashionable green issues. Almost ignored in the recent ministerial reshuffle, a new cabinet post was created. The former chief whip Hilary Armstrong is now responsible for policies aimed at addressing social exclusion.
