I have to admit I’ve been a regular viewer of this years Big Brother. And whilst it urks me, and whilst the they’ve managed to find house-mates with all the mental maturity of a bunch of middle schoolers (9-13). One thing that it’s providing is a look into many of the problems we face today in the UK.

The main thing that I’ve noticed is the in-ability of a group to stand together against clear wrong doing. What do I mean by that? There’s been many examples but I’ll pick a couple to illustrate the problem:

• Alexandra – bullying and intimidation. This woman was almost unreal in the ferocity and the unprovoked nature of her personal attacks. On one such occasion another of the house-mates, I think it was Rachel cooked up four tins of spaghetti. How dare she do such a thing! This led to Alex personally attacking the girl, throwing many a profanity mixed in with personal insults. Now anybody with any sort of moral compass would have thought that this was completely out of line, and unnecessary. So what did the other house-mates do? Nothing! They sat around allowing this to go on, nobody saw fit to stand up to Alex and tell her that her behaviour was unacceptable. Later Alex was evicted by Big Brother for her consistent threatening behaviour and veiled threats of gang land violence.
• Sylvia – theft and dishonesty. She has seen fit to “steal” food and drink and store it away for her and her house friends to consume at a time that suits. She was caught out, when unaware that Mikey (a blind house-mate) was in the same room. Her and her associates were freely talking about, and offering to each other their stolen goods. Now when Mikey pulled them up on this (bearing in mind that blind people generally have more developed hearing), she treat him as though he was stupid not blind. Upon hearing this Mohamed, who bucks the apathetic trend challenged her about this. For which she attacked him, told him he was an “idiot”, and that; “she’ll steal if she wants to”, and “do what she wants to”. All this within ear shot of a number of other house-mates. Their reaction? Do nothing! Accept the behaviour! – Unbelievable!

So what do we have in the house? Not many good Samaritans by the looks of things. Humans who would rather cross the street than help out a fellow human or stand together for what is right.

Sadly the behaviour I see in the house is mirrored in UK society. We’ve got youths committing violent crimes, people afraid to stand up to them. Why is that? Because they’ve gone unchallenged for so long they’ve lost their boundaries. People don’t challenge for fear of loosing their ‘lives’ over drop littered, or for standing up for an old lady who is being verbally abused.

Why do few strike fear into the hearts of the many? Because they know we are divided. They know we won’t stand together. There was a case, and there have been many others of a young black man at a bus stop in Birmingham who was brutally beaten to death. It was estimated at the time that there were more than 100 people who stood idly by, not a good Samaritan among them.

If there were more willing to help, willing to police society, then we wouldn’t be in this situation where we’ve become too afraid to challenge the wrong doers.