The End of Honesty

A sad little piece in the Daily Telegraph this morning recounts how farmers are having to give up their "honesty boxes".   For many years farmers and smallholders have been leaving their produce - eggs, honey, fruit - at the end of their drives, with a box for buyers to put the right money in, and for all those years the system has worked well.   Now, however, they are increasingly finding that the money, or the produce, or both, are being stolen.

I find this a particularly sad reflection on the way that England is going.   People in the country are nearly always more honest than people in towns anyway, and if they are turning into cheats, then there is little hope for us.   I can't help feeling - or hoping - that it is not traditional country-dwellers who are responsible, but the influx of outsiders of all kinds, who do not share the values we have been brought up to believe in.   In any event, it is depressing.