The slow decline of the United Kingdom

We also had distinctive telephone boxes, practical double-decker buses and an enviable postal service. I thought everything in the garden was coming up roses.

I also thought, naively, as it turns out, that as things progressed and technology advanced, that life would improve, better laws would be passed to help and protect us, the country would become the land of milk and honey, and things could only get better. How wrong I was.

Since about 1960, things have started getting worse, one-man buses. People now queue in the rain and the road is blocked, because the bus companies want to save money.

Buses also felt safer with a conductor on board. The driver of the modern claustrophobic monstrosities is not much use these days, tucked up in his bullet proof cubicle.

The postal system has declined, and is continuing to decline. Only one delivery per day, not two. If progress meant forward movement, we would have three or four deliveries a day.

Some post now arrives mid to late afternoon or even late evening, if at all. No progress there then.

Rural post offices, hospitals and fire stations are closing. Police stations are unmanned, the red telephone box has gone, the practical, hop-on, hop-off double-decker buses have gone, free parking on Sundays and holidays has gone.

Traffic warden give out tickets if a disabled badge is upside down or a tax disc is not in the correct position on the windscreen. Common sense has gone along with manners and respect.

Many policeman have long since proven themselves to be just as bad as criminals. Set a thief to catch a thief, I always say.

We used to trust policemen implicitly, but not any more. They are more dangerous in many ways than a gang of hoodies.

The police go for the easy option, the motorist, the cyclist without lights, the household with an overflowing dustbin. Bank robbers, paedophiles, rapists, and corrupt politicians, are just too much like hard work.

The safety lobby have taken our country into a new dark-age of stupidity.

A coastguard chastised for rescuing a girl in danger of falling off a cliff, because he didn't wait for back-up, a paramedic/fireman, ordered not to save people's lives, don't use ladders, don't throw snowballs, put carpet on dance floors, no Morris Dancing, no pancake tossing, no competitive sports and the stupidity continues, and is depressingly long and pathetic.

Youths and immigrant gangs have taking over the streets. Professional politicians, with little or no experience of the real world, are incapable or unwilling to make a stand.

The police have been tied up with paperwork and are scared to act in case they are sued in the ever-growing litigation society we have adopted from America.

The police are impotent and disinterested but we are not allowed to protect ourselves or our property for fear of prosecution.

The inhuman human rights laws appear to protect criminals while ignoring law-abiding citizens.

Criminals walk free because our government is incapable of building prisons to house them. Murderers get away with just a few years confinement.

Citizens in the Middle-Ages were probably safer than we are.

The cult of the celebrity, sadly, is now well entrenched. Celebrities are people often famous for just being famous, famous for being the friend of someone famous, sleeping with someone famous, some are even rich and famous because they are stupid and/or rude.

People are awarded high honours for playing cricket or football or running a race or reading the news on television, or for making records and lots of money.

Some people, it is rumoured, even buy awards and titles. These honours have been cheapened to such an extent that they mean nothing any more.

We are also facing minority rule because immigrants (illegal or otherwise) and Muslims in particular, must not be upset by local traditions.

In fact nothing to do with Christianity must be mentioned in case it upsets a newly-introduced religious minority '“ don't worry about the Christian majority, they don't count? And of course, they don't blow things up if they are slighted.

Our biggest decline is reflected in our politicians and governments. They have shown that that they represent only themselves with golden pensions, second homes, vast expense accounts, theft, embezzlement and all at our expense.

And while these clowns lie to us, they hand over our rights and freedoms and way of life, including our democracy, to unelected foreign civil servants. Nothing to be proud of there then.

It is inevitable that we will become part of the United States of Europe and the clowns in Westminster just don't care if what we want it or not.

We 55 million British citizens no longer have a voice, we are just cash machines for corrupt MPs, councillors and European Union officials.

We have no say on who come in to our country, those who come claim benefits, houses and jobs, they fill our schools and hospitals, drive untaxed and unregistered cars in their tens of thousands, and we are not allowed to stop them, because an EU official has said so.

And to rub salt into the wound, we have to pay for them.

Local councillors echo their bigger, greedier cousins at Westminster, by inflating their egos, with foreign trips and bloated expense accounts, while raising rates to pay for it all.

Not surprisingly, services are declining by the week as more funds are required to pay for these pointless and ineffective fools.

I think we peaked as a nation about 50 to 60 years ago. The War and Post War years were something to be proud of. We stood alone against the Nazis, even the Americans only gave us a few weeks to survive.

But survive we did, taking the war to Europe and to unconditional surrender. We then built up a welfare state and national health services to be proud of '“ for the poor and needy, not the lazy and greedy.

And the reward for saving continental Europe? We are bullied, humiliated and ordered about by insignificant countries, with nothing to be proud of.

We are taken advantage of, we are being robbed and stripped of what is left of our dignity and freedom.

Is it any wonder our politicians are robbing us blind? They can see the writing on the wall '“ because they are writing it. Watch them all disappear to Florida or Australia or New Zealand with their treasure chests, once the EU has dragged us down to the ox-cart level of Romania or Bulgaria.

Watch them leave before the civil war erupts as all the people of Europe who have been tricked, conned and dragged into the EU, demand back their independence.

Thank goodness the best of my life is behind me, although sadly my children have barely started theirs and I am sorry to have to say this, but their future in this once great land, is very bleak indeed.

Anthony Farrar

Compton Ave

Goring-by-Sea