First posted in the original Lobby Group blog by contributor Coral Bloom-

We have the society we allowed ourselves, unfortunately.

1. Reality TV is the opium of the masses. It used to be the church, but not now.
2. Anyone on the recieving end is viewed with disdain or a criminal taint – the unemployed are lazy, uneducated etc etc
3. You must work hard to succeed, spend years in education. So those who do want to succeed are too busy to look around them.
4. Do not complain publicly. Demonstrators are seen as an affliction on society. And now, when was the last time you saw or heard of a student demo. They’ve all gone, since the mid-80s. Weren’t demos a bit of a right of passage for students?
5. Dumbing down. We all know that goes on. Somehow, the value in curiosity and iniative have been lost.
6. Aspiration. We do not aspire to a better society and a better world. We aspire to be a rich footballer, the partner of one, we aspire to have perfectly painted finger nails, or whatever.

This does not frustrate me. It scares me. I’ve watched this happening since the mid-90s, graduate students who have not one ounce of curiosty, iniative etc.

It makes me want to run to the hills. But then what? Stay there until the world wakes up? Well, they are not going to wake up by themselves. We’ll have to do it, we’ll have to wake them up. It won’t be just this group. In a year or so, there will be workers making the long walk to London again, UB40 will re-release ‘I am the 1 in 10′, The Clash will replace Big Brother….

Now I shall return to working on my paragraphs in a mo..