The Things My Wife’s Friends Worry About
Anti-social behaviour and the sorry state of our political representatives top the list. What happens next? It's time to take The Sniff Test.
Things Will Get Better
The Things My Wife Worries About was the most viewed Sniff Test since I revealed my newsletter themed birthday card from my daughter. The last week has been filled by friends talking about it, people who recognise the voice and share the sense of uneasiness. Common concerns are knife crime, anti-social behaviour and embarrassment over those who represent us on the world stage.
The mood of despondency is widespread. In the media, Allister Heath is cheerleader-in-chief,
Britain is cooked. Thirty years of malgovernment, ideological derangement and relentless self-sabotage have ruined us. We are careering towards quasi-bankruptcy, our international reputation shot, our society fractured, our citizens impoverished, unhealthy and demoralised, our public sphere strewn with litter, and our institutions discredited. Crime and disorder are at intolerable levels. – The Daily Telegraph 23.1.2025
Knife crime is within a whisker of its pre-pandemic high, but no higher. Bizarrely, media editors choose to blame shops for selling knives. A rising percentage of people say they witness anti-social behaviour, but incidents reported to the police are well down on the 2021 peak. That year was boosted by covid curtain twitchers, while today there’s a resignation that street crimes will be filed and forgotten. When you are more likely to be arrested for tweeting about the Southport stabber than he was after three warnings to the police, it is easy to be despondent.
Don’t be. The chart shows the average wealth by age group. The newspaper headline accompanying this was about Boomers having all the money, but that’s not the message.
The eldest group owns less than the two cohorts below them, despite living longer. This is because of the middle class boom unleashed from the middle of last century, by technologies such as computing, supersonic flight and nuclear power. Each had its roots in World War Two. AI, biotech and clean energy promise a similar boom for Gen Z. There are cultural challenges to overcome to get there, but life will improve. Let’s start with the challenges.
Teaching Our Children to Lie
Tim Ferris won the 1999 National Chinese Kickboxing Championship by exploiting the rules. He managed his hydration enough to appear for his fight more than two stone heavier than at the previous day’s weigh-in. He then used his advantage to push opponents off the platform. The judges were appalled but unable to do anything. Cutting weight and shoving are now standard practice in the sport. Ferris has achieved fame by teaching people to persist on the road less travelled and on the borders of what’s acceptable.
I used to think there were two types of people, those obeying the rules and those bending them. The latter ensured Oxbridge and the City were kept full of public school boys and taxes fell disproportionately on the middle class. Now we’ve created a third type, who deliberately break the rules.
My underage friends and I would sneak into the pub, and claim cigarette purchases were for our dads. In the age of I.D. it’s harder to do either. But online you are who you want to be and that shapes photos, dating profiles and interactions with authority.
Parents help children to get around age restrictions on social media. It’s common to embellish a c.v. This used to mean inflating grades and work experience, but increasingly requires downplaying social status and parental income. There is no world in which household income at the age of 14 determines your suitability for a job. Yet companies ask the question. Success is something to be ashamed about. Lie once and you’ll do so again, and over 80% of Americans under 25 say they have lied on a c.v.
Nothing can redress the harm suffered by people in the past. All attempts create another group with reason to break the rules. Partial lotteries are a simple solution to recruitment, in which candidates are chosen at random from those who meet the minimum standards. But universities and HR departments are staffed by crusaders against the colonial past. These people often earn enough to disqualify their own children under their rules.
The irony of lying online is that people say they crave authenticity. That’s why articles about my wife’s worries and my daughter’s wit receive the most attention. Yet we still turn to government when salvation lies within.
Getting What We Want From Government
The purpose of government is to make people’s lives better. But if I worry about the size of the national debt and you care about the NHS, our goals conflict. Reduced spending will cost a kid a life-saving operation, while gender realignment for teens means I pay more tax. Stressing about things we cannot control causes distress.
Politicians juggle our competing claims, but once elected they are subject to new forces. There are party and parliamentary rules that govern influence and promotion, international relations to consider and the vagaries of circumstance. The times shape the leader rather than the other way around.
Specific action is simpler than delivering big goals. It’s easier to cut tax than the deficit, to impose traffic restrictions than tackle climate change, and to write a cheque than cure world hunger. The result is token gestures and a pathology of excuses why outcomes were not better.
As a consequence, government buildings are overrun by lobbyists, seeking special treatment for their clients dressed up as bigger principles. The laws passed in parliament are an uncoordinated mess of amendments and additions that subvert their primary purpose. There is an argument that an agreement where no one is entirely happy is the optimal outcome, but that is not how voters see politics.
The Revolt of the Public
Politicians used to hide behind rhetoric, slogans and the secrecy of deal-doing. Technology has laid their practices bare and handed the agenda to the opinionated on social media. Martin Gurri explained this in The Revolt of the Public. Governments grow, because that is what they are designed to do, while at the same time looking increasingly ineffective. This gives rise to populist unrest.
The Fourth Turning is a period of crisis and transition to a new First Turning. During this, institutions that lost public trust are reformed or replaced and society rallies behind strong leaders bent on reconstruction. Communities find shared purpose, as older generations retreat into guiding roles and younger ones become more cooperative. There is a rejection of the individualism and decadence of past decades, and new alliances and hierarchies bring optimism. The First Turning is known as a High.
Rebuilding is stressful and comes with a cost. But stress in pursuit of betterment is positive. It’s called eustress. The Grey Champion, an elder born in the previous First Turning, emerges with strong convictions and clear moral vision. Their arrival galvanises society into action and a marks an escape from the descent into chaos.
Trump is an unlikely hero, but the Grey Champion who emerges every 80 years or so, is a polarising figure. There is no other way to bring change. Trump’s team includes early Millennials, now entering their forties, who can become tomorrow’s strong leaders. Is this theory fanciful? It is the vague, sometimes mystical imaginings of generational theory that enable it to persist, part horoscope, part precise prediction.
What is clear is that Starmer is no grey champion. He came to power promising more of the same with better management. Like Biden, he was elected on a centre-left agenda and governs from the hard left. The Democrats and Labour are in the grip of radical elements, although the tide is turning in the US.
San Francisco is the bluest of blue cities, long gripped by paralysis and a sense of crisis. Its new mayor is the first since 1911 to be elected without prior government experience. His platform is accountability and change. Starmer’s cabinet are proving to be class warriors determined to right a generation of wrongs in a single parliament. Theirs is not a new way but a loading of the scales through laws, quangos and manipulation of the administrative state. Britain is four years behind, but therefore able to learn from the US experience.
The Right Kind of Stress
We cannot control what others think or do. Worrying about the behaviour of friends and family is stressful enough, without considering the public at large. Our way out is to try and improve matters.
Happiness equates to excitement, contentment is its aftermath, and boredom its opposite. A reduction in knife crime, anti-social behaviour, gambling addiction and drug abuse, requires access to alternative activities. These are best provided in local communities.
The government cannot solve behavioural problems. It is too big and its measures too generic to address local conditions. It supports charities, but mostly the Arts Council. This money flows to 1,000 National Portfolio Organisations and the largest recipients are London’s cultural icons, where most teenagers wouldn’t be seen dead.
You get the streets you deserve. Alone we are powerless to tackle gangs, littering and the destruction of addiction. The answer lies in community. Building one is stressful, but it is the right kind of stress.