I do sometimes wonder if the British press has much room for actual news at all. So much of the available space (both pixelated and dead-tree) appears to be taken up with the results of surveys, opinion polls and studies all of which emanate from very august-sounding bodies but which are usually, like as not, merely trojan horses for some vested interest or other.
That said, this latest ‘shock, horror report’ does have a certain resonance to it. Even if it turns out not be accurate it still sounds as if it should be or could be:
The middle classes are turning to crime in the belief they have been victimised research finds.
More than 60% of people surveyed in England and Wales admitted they had exaggerated an insurance claim, paid cash to avoid tax or kept money when given too much change.
But they would not consider themselves criminals, scientists told a science conference in Salford.
This appears to be causing something of a hubbub and I am not surprised, given that we like to think of ourselves as reliably law-abiding people. I cannot entirely discount the possibility that this is all the result of the same old method of stringing together a bunch of manipulated statistics into a pre-determined theory but it would not surprise me in the least if it turned out to have some basis in reality.
British civil behaviour was never an accident. It was the entirely predictable result of a lightly and reasonably governed country which allowed all those tacit, civic relationships to grow and bloom. But that was then and this is now and now we are monstrously over-governed and intolerably regulated. Hence, the reverse effect begins to set in.
The forgotten lesson is that obedience to the law is not and never has been a one-way street. It’s a deal under which the law gets respect provided it acts respectably. Too much top-down and you begin to crowd out all the spontaneous good that comes from ground-up.
We’re not talking about revolution here or anarchy on the streets. At least not yet. But we are fraying at the edges and that is a warning sign.
Is keeping excess change a crime?
It’s certainly Wrong, yes, but is it criminal, in Britain? I suppose it might somehow be considered theft, even though you were given the money – though, “the cashier made a math error and I did not correct it” is a lousy basis for a crime.
At any time in our past it would have taken a very upstanding individual indeed, a veritable paragon of virtue, to be able to claim true purity of deed and purpose. The public excpectation, however, was there in spades – hence all that Victorian hypocrisy upon which the sixties radicals built our liberal revoltuion.
These days, I suspect, the actual standard of decency by which the middle classes are judged has not changed that much. But the standard by which the middle classes judge themselves – that is, their candour and their sense of seriousness – might have suffered quite a bit.
I suspect it is the British tax system that is corrupting a famously honest people. It is the same way in the US. The tax bills are so unjust that one loses the sense of obligation one has been raised to feel toward authority figures.
When you begin stretching the law to the limit to minimize your absurd tax obligations (knowing everyone else is doing the same) fudging becomes a habit.
A: Really, who ever in the history of this nation could have got to late median age and never comitted a sin such as one of these? Except exagerating the insurance claim – that’s reprehensible.
The “Great British Middle Class” are a bunch of hypocrites, anyway. Always have been. Their open aspiration is to limousine socialism. I wouldn’t put excess change-pocketing beyond any single one of ’em.
Pilfering, dishonesty, massaging insurance claims – that’s standard practice in Britain. Refreshing to see such honesty – perhaps the middle classes are learning that fraudulent cliams put up their premiums. Probably not.
Since when have those who have “paid cash to avoid tax” been considered criminals by anybody in the libertarian community? Since tax collection itself (over and above the minimum revenue required for maintaining law and order) is a form of white-collar crime, surely tax evasion is the duty of any self-respecting, freedom-loving citizen. The sooner the welfare state collapses, the better. Since avoiding taxation contributes to its collapse, the more evasion, the merrier.
Charles,
You will find no argument with those sentiments here. The reference to tax evasion as a ‘crime’ was in the linked article on the BBC website where they take quite a different view, editorially speaking.