Damning Partygate video reveals utter lack of moral compass: Sarah Todd

The video footage of the drunken dancing wouldn’t have looked out of place on some comedy sketch show; something the likes of Harry Enfield would have put together to take the rise out of 1980s yuppies. For a good few minutes this daft constituent thought it really was some sort of joke; a clip that had been put together as a parody. All it was short of was a drunken lunge across the photocopier.

But no, it really happened and it has left a feeling of being completely upskittled.

Our offspring are now grown-up at 19 and 22, but throughout their teenage years their mother was forever reminding them about their moral compass. It became something of a family joke, especially before they were going off to a party, that they would (and often still do) make a mickey-taking mention like “don’t worry mother - we’ll remember our moral compass” before this misery guts could give them The Lecture about making sure everybody gets home safe, not drinking too much or making fools of themselves.

With no recollection about where the phrase moral compass was first heard it was, just the other day, looked up.

The dictionary defines moral compass as a person’s ability to judge what is right and wrong. Others describe it as a set of values that guide our decision-making, affect our actions and make us who we are as a person. It points us in the right direction; giving a sense of the greater good even if it may not be beneficial for us.

This writer is no goody goody. Please don’t imagine some kind of strict Victorian parent forbidding their children from having any fun. Both have been at university and are young farmers, so certainly know how to have a rare old time. That’s the point, that while living a life to the full there should be some internal navigation device - a moral compass - that keeps us pretty much on the straight and narrow. There will always be the odd blip but for most decent people an inbuilt moral compass kicks in and prevents us from overstepping the mark.

It’s hard not to wonder whether, with less Church primary schools and the demise of a generation that intrinsically knew right from wrong; our whole country’s moral compass has gone awry. Maybe these buffoons drunkenly dancing are just a reflection of a wider population that doesn’t have that old-fashioned awareness of the difference between right and wrong.

The partygate revellers will doubtless be from traditionally ‘good’ backgrounds but there is a trait among some upwardly mobile sectors of the population to pay for every opportunity going and push their little darlings to trample others underfoot to get to the top - whether it be at a sports match, social occasion or climbing the career ladder.

A basic example of a shift in society’s attitude is the recent heatwave. How many people nowadays would think to offer a visitor - somebody like a builder, plumber or electrician - a cooling drink?

Not many but maybe, rather than rudeness, this is more to do with a world where political correctness has blurred lines.

At the rubbish tip the other day it seemed only right to offer the worker who’d gone the extra mile – almost literally after this recycler’s struggle to park anywhere near the skips with a trailer on - a fiver tip as a token of appreciation. No he couldn’t, it would have been a sacking offence to “accept a gratuity”.

He said he was still expecting to get into trouble for taking an ice-cream the other day from a lady who he had helped with a freezer and, like me, she’d had been told he couldn’t accept a tip. She’d returned (nothing wrong with her moral compass) with ice-creams for the whole team. He wasn’t joking when he said accepting them on that baking hot day could get him into trouble.

Simple things like a nod of the head in appreciation from somebody who you’ve let cross over the road help make the world go around. Just start and notice how people don’t wave acknowledgements and say thank you like they used to. Yes, we’re all sick to the back teeth of partygate, but if nothing else it shines a much-needed light on our country’s moral compass.