The philosophy of modern Britain: I must have it and I must have it right now

It’s not all doom and gloom, then. A new study suggests that we are turning into aborigines — or Indigenous Australians, to use the more acceptable term. Various anthropological investigations have depicted aborigines as being remarkably cheerful, laid-back and contented, all of which are admirable qualities. They also have a tendency to defecate wherever they are standing, according to one of the first investigations (1929) into their behaviour, from the Hungarian psychoanalyst and anthropologist, Geza Roheim. When nature calls, Roheim asserted, the aborigine simply squats and has done with it; he has not the slightest notion of deferred gratification. He is, in all possible meanings of the phrase, easygoing.

So too with our children. A new study sponsored by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers insists that there has been an enormous rise in the number of children attending infant school still wearing nappies. The younger classrooms are, these days, a noisome quagmire of urine and faeces, according to the ATL. Some teachers are required to attend to the incontinence of their charges nine times a day, thus detracting from the hours which they can spend teaching the others how to glue toilet rolls together and properly appreciate the totally legitimate aspirations of transgendered persons. Some schools have even started classes for parents showing them how to — and, crucially, why they should — train their kids not to take a crap the very second the notion occurs, but to wait a while.

Of course, teachers spend a lot of time whining about children and parents to the press, sometimes to mask their own manifest inadequacies. But this one has the ring of truth about it, I think. And the unpleasant duties thus imposed upon the teachers are not the worst of it; they are simply the turtle’s head of the problem, if you will.