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A single event has prompted me to add my threeha'penceworth to the world-wide blogfest:
The drowning of a ten-year-old boy while trying to save his younger step-sister who had fallen into a lake was widely reported recently. It seems that as he drowned, two police community service officers stood by and did nothing, on the grounds that they weren't quite sure where the boy was (although a Sergeant who arrived later found him with no difficulty - but too late) and that they had not been trained to rescue from water.
A senior (I believe Asst Chief Constable level) police officer later said that these two apologies for human beings - sorry, cso persons - had acted correctly for, as I think I understood it, health and safety reasons.
I've been around a bit (just in case I didn't give that away in the title). I think this was the focusing moment, which maybe all who live too long must come to, when I at last realised that I have no understanding any more (and perhaps not much respect) for vast parts of the society in which I live.
Since I don't imagine that my life is much different from plenty of others, I hope this will strike a chord:
A couple of times over the years I have put myself in danger's way in order to rescue somebody. I haven't done this because I'm a hero (in fact, I'm careful not to let myself think when faced with these situations...) nor even, particularly, from a sense of duty ( which seems to me to be the most honourable reason), but because I am more ashamed of not acting than I am afraid of the situation which I'm facing. It was a good enough reason for subalterns on the Western Front.
It's the absence of even that shame in those cso people that defeats me: I can't even explain my feelings about the senior policeman who supported them.
Having said all this: I don't believe that this is a matter of right and wrong, but that it's a cultural thing. I don't hold that they are in error - just that they and I live in different worlds.
O Tempora, O Mores.
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