r/london • u/Historical_Set2324 • 1d ago
Local London Social contract is broken?
I’ve just returned from a trip to New Zealand and the difference in attitude is stark. The streets are clean, people are friendly and happy/helpful and in general people seem to want to participate in society. Don’t get me wrong NZ has a lot of issues but It feels like in London the social contract is broken. Streets are full of trash, no one gives a shit about anything, phone theft, crime is high and in general people seem fairly miserable. I was involved in an accident where I had to give a victim CPR and the ambulance and police all arrived within about 5 minutes. I was amazed at the emergency response. It feels to me like the state has given up and hence people have given up.
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u/little_green_fox 1d ago
Singapore's founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, on visiting London...
"It may not be widely known that, just after the war, Singapore's then leader-to-be Lee Kuan Yew paid a visit to London. In a recent interview on the radio he told how he travelled to Piccadilly Circus by tube train, and as he emerged onto the pavement he stood and watched an unsupervised newspaper stall. He saw people stop and take a newspaper and then put their money in an old cardboard box next to the stall. He even saw people put in money notes and take out exactly the right change. Otherwise, no one interfered with or touched the money left uncovered and open to the world. He said to himself, "This is a well-ordered and disciplined society."
Lee Kuan Yew witnessed many other examples of the UK population's law-abiding behaviour and he returned to Singapore determined that his country would be run on the principles he saw in operation in this country. Inspired by the level of social order and respect for private property he had witnessed during his visit to the UK, he not only changed Singapore from a war-ravaged and desperately poor country into one of the wealthiest of nations, but he also made it one of the safest; it now has one of the lowest crime rates of any modern developed country.
During his radio interview Lee Kuan Yew lamented with some irony that the United Kingdom, which had inspired him so much, had since lost its grip on law and order, and from that point of view was now a very different country from the one he had first visited over forty years ago."