The price of liberty is an ever-rising crime rate

For a century and more, we have been bent on liberating ourselves from the Victorian sense of sin and damnation. Liberation, not repression, has been the order of the day, and now we are surprised at the consequences: an increase in violent crime among the young who don't even have the remnants of our old hell-fire terror.

If only parents could bother to teach their children the difference between right and wrong, the pundits cry, as if this would be enough. Realistically speaking, however, nothing short of restoring many of the older repressions, ­ not only sexual but across the board, ­ would be enough.

Ask today's young what they have been put on earth to do, and the reply will be: realise my full potential; enjoy good personal and sexual relationships; enrich myself. If public service comes into it at all, it will be as a personal therapy - a

way of feeling good. One's duty today is to maximise pleasure.

In my time it was utterly different. It was all about painful self-denial and self-discipline rather than self-gratification; on sacrificing the present for the future. Of course self-enrichment came into it, but not because of the pleasure it involved - rather it was the pain, hard work and saving.

Nobody wants to go back to the repressive days. But neither do they want to pay the price for not doing so. Freedom is not for free and the idea that a little good parenting would do the trick is shockingly unrealistic. Yet this, along with equally inadequate and foolish anti-knife wheezes, are all the politicians dare to offer.

Expect crime rates to rise. Given the liberal culture, they are still surprisingly low.