Lencoboy, I realise the point of your thread and apologise if its gone off track a bit.[/QUOTE]

No it hasn't gone off track at all.

In fact I'm now concerned that I may be the one responsible for starting a thread that could easily descend into venomous arguments and debates, though I really hope it doesn't. And I hope everyone remains as civil and respectful as possible, as it wasn't my intention to troll or anything.

Nevertheless, it is reassuring to see some level-headed responses in general so far, as people who constantly harp on about the 'good old days' and nearly everything being dreadful today, are amongst my biggest bugbears. True there are some pretty horrible and unfair things happening these days, and probably always will be, but as the likes of Pulisa, Carnation, Terry, etc have pointed out, and contrary to popular belief, I personally don't think we are worse off now than ever in the grand scheme of things, and (dare I say it) I am a lifelong Labour voter, even though I may not have always agreed with all of their policies.

To put things in perspective, one is probably still more likely to be, say, a victim of a road crash than to be struck down with Coronavirus, be killed or caught up in a terrorist attack or riot, be randomly assaulted or murdered by feral youths, etc. Although I am not in any way trivialising any of the issues I have just mentioned, it's the fact that we seem to have increasingly become slaves to the media over the past twenty-odd years or so, both online and with conventional printed publications and have a tendency to quake in our boots over certain events that may happen many miles from where we actually live that probably wouldn't have troubled the national headlines during the pre-Internet era, unless it was very very serious, of course.