From Tim Hargreaves.
I AM a some time Jersey resident who has spent the last 40 years in Western Australia. Every year I get back to Jersey I notice the increasing deterioration of the moral fabric of British society.
The following incident served to show me it isn’t just the obvious categories who compete to drag Britons down into a moral abyss, eg, the destitute institutional church, crooked politicians, the gutter press and the BBC with its pornographic ‘entertainment’ – to mention but some – but elements of the supposedly respectable shopkeeping and business middle class.
The incident in question went as follows: I was in a general store when from outside came noisy shouts and hooliganism of half a dozen youths. The two girls in their midst were every bit as vocal with their four-letter words and bizarre hair-dos and bits of metal in their noses and eyelids.
‘That’s today’s youth for you,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘Oh, yes,’ I replied, looking at the various newspapers on display, ‘and so who is responsible for this?’
I gestured at one paper whose front page depicted an almost naked woman leaning forward in what was an obscene pose. She might as well have not been wearing underwear. The headline said something about one woman kissing another woman’s boobs.
I said words to the effect of ‘Do you think this sort of stuff sets much of an example for our youth?’ The shopkeepers gave an uncomfortable half laugh and said, ‘I suppose it doesn’t really, does it?’
‘So tell me,’ I said, ‘are you obliged to be a party to conveying that message to society which depicts women as some sort of tawdry, cheap sex object? Hardly enabling?’
He again laughed in an uncomfortable manner and said that he was obliged to carry every publication the distributors sent him. I wondered if he would have so readily obliged the distributors if it had been his own wife or daughter involved.
Suffice to say there are now pressure groups in Australia who have withdrawn advertising support and are boycotting retail outlets who carry magazines, newspapers and literature depicting women in a degrading manner.
Les Huriaux,
St Ouen.
