R.E.S.P.E.C.T

Two distinct types of people living in England today can be broadly described as those who are respectful of others and those who are not.

The respectful ones automatically default to this position until the subject of their attention prove themselves to be unworthy; they automatically treat another’s property with care and attention knowing, as they do, that sacrifices are often made to secure and own property. It takes time to earn the money to buy a mobile phone, or a bicycle, or a car and this is time out of someone’s life that they can never get back.

The disrespectful ones care only for themselves and their own feelings and this is their starting position whenever they meet someone they do not know. This is their position when they come into contact with the property of a stranger. They are careless and they couldn’t care less. As long as they are all right, their mates are ok and their stuff is fine then everything is sorted. Anything and anyone else doesn’t really matter.

It’s not always easy to spot which category a person falls into. Who is who? Which one of these people can be trusted with your iPod, your zippo or your garden lawnmower? Who will respect you and your property and who will not?

We need a simple test. One that can be employed by anyone in any village, town and city across the land using common items in a real world arena rather than in a stuffy laboratory with electrodes and those plotters they use to draw wavy lines on paper.

We at The England Project have such a test. It’s a destructive one in as much as to successfully classify someone as automatically disrespectful (let’s call them toe-rags) damage to property must be caused but, on the plus side, it is an easy test to run and it’s one that most of you try out unwittingly a number of times a month if not on a weekly basis. This is good because it means no training is required.

The test goes something like this.

Drive your car to a public car park, for instance a local shopping centre or supermarket, and park it. Then choose a spot some distance away from where you can observe your car. The toe-rags are the ones that park next to you and open their doors onto yours or who scrape past with their zips or shopping bags or trolley. The toe-rags are the ones that let their children push open their car doors themselves at some velocity onto your shiny paintwork. The toe-rags are the ones that simply don’t give a damn.

Why should they? They have no idea who you are. Who are you to have a nice motor anyway? Nice and shiny and clean.

What’s the problem with that bloke parking that heap of old bollocks van next to your well cared for family car and putting a few dents and scratches into it eh? I mean it’s just a fucking car. You shouldn’t get so uptight about it. Sure, his van looked like shit particularly parked so close to that nice car of yours but now yours has a few dents in it (and that long scratch down the side from that whateverthefucikitwas thing the toe-rag was carrying) his van don’t look so bad. Shit, you could almost be car brothers. What’s that? Show respect for your property? Bollocks.

Humph, sorry about that little rant. That was my family car that the toe-rag decided to park his van next to.