Well researched and reasoned. I like it.

I see that you are a Potteries lad. Blackpool here and if it hadn't been for the railway Blackpool would never have existed in its present form. ... It was to recover from the mistake of putting an unused spur off the Fleetwood line into Blackpool, then an area of substance dwellers, that someone came up with the idea of day trips t'seaside in each mill town's Wakes week. That was t'start of tourist trade.

I know of and understand your frustration, Len. 30 years ago I knew a Geordie woman who at age 50 studied sociology at an Australian Univesity. She got into trouble simply for using words no longer in popular use by the morasses (deliberate misuse of the word). A 90+-year-old ex-school teacher of art history, art, pottery was forever decrying not only the slavish belief in the accuracy of information in Wikipedia but also the arrogant ignorance of Australian University curricula and loss of art history leading to curators and gallery directors who usually talk through their anal sphincters on the subject. That such curricula are set by dumb politicians and university committees seeking the big buck rather than educational excellence and the advancement of human knowledge and understanding is IMO ultimately destructive.
Economies and political fortunes are now longer based upon reality but on manipulation of statistics and creation illusory profit - look at domestic and commercial property prices, employment, strong foundations in business being eschewed in preference for instant profit from product or service having a limited shelf or life usefulness - most of today's music and fashion ... it is disposable.
Sadly this results in similar occurring in the courts that are administrating bad law and compounding it with the illogical decision and refusal to properly examine the evidence.
You may have noticed posts that I made regarding an Australian journalist who has recently been jailed for contempt of court because he has had the temerity to challenge several personality's behaviours here in Australia. Today's brief from him regards the Pell paedophilia charges and suppression orders in Australia not working for overseas reports: [kangaroocourtofaustralia.com]

@FrayedBear The world has gone insane, and no one under thirty five seems to have noticed, because it is all they have ever grown up with.
My thirty odd years old daughter constantly berates me as being out of touch with "reality" when I point out items in the news that are blatantly stupid, or downright mad, such as in our area where the police don't have the resources to investigate burglary so just hand out crime numbers for insurance purposes, but have just built a huge media crimes investigation office where two hundred and fifty police officers surf the net all day looking for "hate crimes" on face book.

@LenHazell53 It really is pathetic. I think I have similar but we simply rarely talk. A good friend from school days was a red hot socialist but now eschews it all as nonsense (amazing what working for the same department for 40 years and now having a pension linked to the UK Prime Minister's salary does to you), he's now virally and viciously Trumpaholic and believes that it is the result of a 1920 Communist conference that advocated that only when the world gets to its current degree of madness and absurdity will people actually turn to communism. That's if some bastard doesn't push the button in a fit of spiteful retribution taking their bat and ball home with them not allowing anyone to play.

@FrayedBear Funny that, my late writing partner in his youth ran a local branch of the LPYS, in later times was tipped as the party choice for local MP, but during the militant tendency nonsense was almost expelled for being too left wing and in the face of new labour did leave the labour party never to return.
Before his death in 2009 he decried socialism as a "daft idea", was living and working abroad, married to an American woman so right wing she made Anne Coulter look like Barbara Castle and died furious that he and his wife could not go back to the USA as he was listed as politically undesirable for beliefs he no longer held.
It happened to a lot of us I suppose, though I still consider myself a social democrat.
As for the belief that the current degree of madness and absurdity will have people actually turn to communism, I find that unlikely when society has been so conditioned to the madness and absurdity that they actually find it sane.
William Shakespeare said 'Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile;Filths savour but themselves.
Today we might alter that to sanity to the madman seems mad Lunatics favour their delusions.

At one time in my career, I trained telephone customer service workers and wrote packages on vocal technique, clarity, diction, spoken word speed.
I gave up on it when I was asked to train telesales staff and told an applicant with a cleft palette, a lisp and the inability to pronounce the letter H without regurgitating sputum all over the room that he perhaps should look elsewhere for an alternate career, and I was fired for being prejudice.
I felt like I was in that old Cook and Moore sketch about the one legged man who wants to audition for the role of Tarzan, only it was real, was being taken seriously and I was the idiot.

@LenHazell53 Shakespeare was before his time. Psychologists call "Lunatics favour their delusions" "follies" as in follie à deux, trois, quatre up to en masse depending on the number in the coven sharing the follie.

I love your telemarketing story. It resounds with a comment made by the head of the dental hospital recently that "he is no longer under the HR policies allowed to tell an employee that what they are doing is wrong". I'm waiting for someone to blow the place up and then be promoted. This seemingly is what happens elsewhere in government occupations unless it is shown to be violence against women or creating glass ceiling.

@LenHazell53 Barbara Castle - a name that gave me pause being member for Blackburn all those years.

I love your optimism. Unfortunately there is a huge number of people who simply do not care. They were similarly represented in school. After 10 years of avoiding and deliberately disrupting others education are these same people likely to change.
Look at the current Brexit mess and the few number who created it.
Look at the response to homelessness,
the fact that one third or more of British people have criminal records,
that as Len states burglary is not investigated but huge resources are employed investigating hate crime on social pages. I frequently find myself saying "how can I be hating you when I take the time to consider and address you with my thoughts about the issues that you raise. If I hated you I would simply ignore you."
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. They require a lot more cogitation.

Their have been atm 14 visitors to this thread. Only 2 express opinion through emoji reaction, 6 including yourself have written something in response. There are supposedly 30,000 members worldwide and less than 100 or so in this group. I do not find it encouraging and yet again I find the automatic desire is to reject the piece because of the messengers and not factual disproof of its content.

You only have to read posts and comments in the Community Senate, "Trump Pinata " and a number of other groups to instantly say that is proof of behaviour, that isn't. You do not need to double scrutinize RT who in fact dissociate themselves from the author's opinions.

Furthermore I'm pleased that you rate the issue highly within your list of important topics. IMO it should be front and centre in discussions held in the Senate group however the last time I raised such an issue I was cried down for making irrelevant posts to the Senate. It was then put to me that the Senate should only be discussing program procedure of how the site operates and not those matters that effect the wellbeing of members.

Does it matter who it comes from. You seem to have no problem with the fact / thrust of the condition - the behaviour of the correspondents. Don't shoot the messenger.

RT is a perfectly legitimate news source if like all others it contextualised as to it's agenda, owners and political bias.
I get stick for referencing the Daily Mail because it is a right wing rag, which it is, but despite it's bias, it is still usually factually true if you ignore the spin put on those facts.

@FrayedBear my point about who it comes from is that the Russian government, have been actively trying to promote divisiveness abroad and have utilised the Internet Research Agency and Russia Today in their efforts. I'm not disputing the accuracy of what they're reporting, just pointing out that they're not reporting on their own efforts to make this particular piece of news.

Well put I agree totally.The ability to take advice, reason or apologize is lost on most people.

I am not surprised that they were left speechless. One of the difficulties is that we are not really sure where wisdom lies( or even if it exists) Wisdom is not confined to the aged or the wealthy. We must get the young to try to be wise and listen to how everyone achieves it. You must start in schools very soon.