Last updated 11:38, Monday, 21 April 2008

What Hitler failed to do in the war, yobs, file wielding bureaucrats and extremists have achieved in 2008 – Britain’s surrender.

Run up the white flag. It really does seem that we have given up the unequal fight.

Barriers seal off a Carlisle street at weekends and turn it over to the drunks and yobs who stagger out of the bars and clubs into the roadway, a danger to themselves and everyone else.

I’m not saying it’s a system that doesn’t work. In fact it may well preserve life and limb when there’s such a dangerous mix of traffic and drunks.

But come on, don’t make me choke on my Horlicks by suggesting it’s part of turning the city centre into a Continental style café culture.

Culture is the one word I would not use to describe what goes on in the wee small hours in Carlisle, and indeed most other town and city centres across this once sceptred isle, now splattered with litter and vomit.

It’s giving up. Giving in to the yobs who can roam at will.

It may be a workable idea, but let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that it’s a “good” one.

When the Home Secretary and her small army of minders visit the great border city and fancy a late night kebab, they may well be able to walk the length of Botchergate without fear of being run down.

But is this really how we want to see our British streets and city centres? Turned into virtual no-go areas after dark?

And who would ever have thought that a football club might have to consider abandoning a minute’s silence on the 50th anniversary of the loss of it’s golden generation of young players because it’s feared fans of the opposition might try to disrupt and ruin the occasion?

Manchester United now say they are going ahead with the silence marking the death of the Busby Babes in the Munich air disaster of February, 1958.

I think it’s shockingly sad that they even have to consider not having the minute’s silence because football supporters can’t be trusted to observe it with due reverence.

I’m no Man United fan, but I remember seeing that wonderful young team in 1957, just weeks before the crash. Indeed their last FA Cup game was at Workington. That was when big time clubs didn’t disrespect the competition by sending their reserve teams and plead for mid-winter breaks for “tired” players then head off abroad to play lucrative friendlies.

It was an era when fans could display partisanship without the acrid stench of bitterness that pervades today.

When a member of staff at M&S can take it upon herself not to sell Bibles because they offend her religious views and when no-one dare inspire young people any more for fear of the clipboard wielding army of bureaucrats and health and safety experts, what kind of country are we allowing Britain to become?

One where the putting up of gates in the street on a Saturday night might as well represent pulling up the drawbridge for a society that has well and truly lost the plot along with its sense of community and self respect.