There's just one group of British people who are told to take responsibility

Telegraph

16 hours ago

I recently had to complete a 'Safe and Considerate Driving Course', which took a day. The first half was held in a sort of classroom where our small group watched videos and were instructed in various dos and don'ts. The second half was 'on-road' with a helpful supervisor.
The importance of confidentiality was heavily emphasised, so I shall not reveal any identifiable details, but what interested me greatly was the philosophy which lay behind the course.
It was that each driver must take complete responsibility for his or her actions. All drivers – certainly all drivers made to go on such courses – tend to blame others for anything bad that happens. A crash is the fault of another driver, we say, or potholes or confusing road signs or traffic jams, or – a real favourite – of cyclists. We also like accusing the family member in our passenger seat of causing irritation or distraction.
Our course teachers did not say such considerations are non-existent. How could they? The human race is full of imperfections, especially noticeable when on the move. But they stuck to the central issue: the only power that drivers have to improve their situations is to improve themselves.
For example, we can, if we try, build in enough journey time to avoid getting flustered and stressed; we will help a traffic blockage flow quicker if we give way to someone than if we push in front, and so on. If we are to be better drivers, we must study, admit and correct our faults. This attitude reminded me of Step 4 of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous – the need to 'make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves'.
Our teachers were polite and quite humorous, but on this key point, they were stern and unbending.
As I drove (oh so carefully) away, it struck me how very different this theory of conduct was from most of what we nowadays get taught in other forums.
For instance, our obsession with being discriminated against on grounds of race, sex, sexuality, age, religion etc, and of being able to sue for redress, is entirely based on the idea that we are the victims of others and nothing is our fault.
Indeed, the famous Macpherson definition of a racist incident ('A racist incident is an incident which the victim or anyone else considers racist') makes every complainant a victim without any need for proof. It leaves no room at all for the idea that the 'victims' may be in error, let alone offensive themselves.
Similarly, all plans for prison reform are based on the idea that prisoners are splendid people who just need lots of help getting jobs. It never seems to be part of their sentence that they should learn to examine their own behaviour, repent and do better.
The Safe and Considerate Driving Course is partly precise guidance (eg 'Only a fool breaks the two-second rule'). Chiefly, though, it is an applied model of how to maintain a good society. It should be applied more widely.
A serious man?
As Sir Keir Starmer marks his first anniversary in office, I do feel a bit sorry for him. He won an astounding victory last year and has not yet proved himself evil, extreme, corrupt or stupid, yet everyone says he is useless. It is wrong – even mildly unconstitutional – to write him off after only a year.
Nevertheless, I do think he has some explaining to do, and explaining seems to be an activity that he does not enjoy. The word he most likes to use is 'serious'. He is serious and so are the various summits he attends, he says; people like Kemi Badenoch who say he should not globetrot but should face the House of Commons, are not serious, he adds.
I do hope he is serious: these are serious times. Sir Keir certainly has a serious demeanour. He has had serious words to say about government borrowing, welfare waste, immigration, rearmament, Ukraine, Israel/Palestine and much more.
More often than not, however, he has started off on one track and then either reversed direction or not followed through. It is, as yet, too early to say for certain, but Sir Keir has not yet proved that he deserves to be taken seriously.
Rural buses
For most of my nearly 70 years, I have lived in a rural area. For all that time, people have complained about inadequate and declining rural bus services. For all that time, however, I have observed that rural buses are never full, except some in the school-run. Most are about four-fifths empty; it is not uncommon to see a rural bus with no passengers at all.
How to account for this mismatch between alleged need and actual use? A partial explanation is that if the bus service schedule thins out, people feel it is unreliable and therefore switch to other means of transport.
But another factor is a failure to adapt the transport itself to falling demand. Why are most rural buses still extremely large, and therefore very expensive in capital costs and on petrol? Their unnecessary size also makes them slower than they need be, blocking country lanes. They are the elephant in the road.
I believe their normal maximum passenger capacity is 57 although, for most journeys, 15 or so would do the trick. It would be an act of true social entrepreneurism to design a new, compact rural bus, cheaper to run and cosier, by a country mile, to travel in.