There was a great irony in our household this week. As I opened the first Christmas card of the season and read its “peace and goodwill to one and all” message I couldn’t help but notice my visual backdrop, a Sky News story showing mercenary shoppers scrambling over cheap and cheaply made television sets like starving rats scrapping over a slice of diseased meat. In this season of benevolence and generosity it was behaviour as far removed from goodwill as it’s possible to get.

Starring at the TV, I couldn’t work out what was more shocking, the supermarket scrums or the fact that I wasn’t surprised. In varying degrees of intensity, its behaviour I’m now used to seeing on a daily basis, whether on the roads during the morning commute, or in the media news coverage of “religion told me to do it” human-on-human violence. Its behav ... Read more »