IF YOU love your country - and we all should - you will also be ashamed of it at times and aware of its shortcomings.
It seems to me that England has always been a rough old nation and it's getting rougher.
The things that make life hard to endure here - such as yobbery, violence and anti-social behaviour - are on the rise.
That is beyond doubt and a cause for great worry and shame.
The fundamental problem is that the civil authorities can't, won't or daren't trust the public to behave themselves.

Is that because English people have become more stupid, aggressive, coarse and selfish than was the case in previous generations?
Sadly, that is probably the case, though I must say wherever I go I still encounter much humility, good humour and kindness in English people.
However, the signs of officialdom's profound loss of trust in ordinary people are everywhere ...
You can't ride on public transport without being bombarded with offensive posters which implicitly accuse all passengers of being potential fare-dodgers and psychopaths out to bludgeon rail and bus staff to death.
In hospitals and in council and benefits offices there exists a defensive assumption that the public are aggressive, unreasonable barbarians from whom public servants must be shielded and protected.
In the centre of Liverpool and other regional centres, traditional street fountains can no longer be permitted - because the authorities believe the public will (a) urinate in them (b) pour washing-up liquid in them to cause bubbles or (c) smash them to bits.
The only sort of fountains that can be allowed in English cities now are ugly, vandal-proof ones that rise straight from holes in the ground and have no pools or ornamental bits that can be abused.
Public toilets, meanwhile, have been either closed down or made as unpleasant as possible to deter vandals and those cruising for gay sex.
And many of the surviving toilet blocks have been fitted with horrible special lighting that makes it difficult for junkies to find a vein to shoot up in.
Honestly, what a bloody sad state we English have got ourselves in!
As for the giant TV screen in Clayton Square, Liverpool, I once hoped it might become a symbol of a revival in standards of public behaviour and good manners.
But now we are told we can't even be trusted to watch England's World Cup clashes on it, after pussy-footing cops and wobbling wallies at the city council decided they couldn't cope with a few spotty youths chucking beer cans and bottles of urine.
The response of the public authorities is both craven and pathetically proscriptive.
The public authorities' attitude is craven because instead of pussy-footing around the cops should be freed to steam in and haul yobs off to special sittings of courts and then slam 'em in jail for a fortnight to cool down.
Councils and cops are proscriptive because they always adopt the knee-jerk response of closing things down and withdrawing facilities at the first hint of trouble.
So long as the vast army of pen-pushers, form-fillers and box-tickers in the public services can be kept in cushy well-paid jobs, no-one gives a stuff that the public can be treated like feral sub-humans, never to be trusted.
I have no magic solution to the problems we face, but I know this much: the decent majority within the general public is rightly resentful of those in authority who treat them as delinquents.
That resentment breeds rebelliousness and further law-breaking, so adding to England's social mess.
And the problems begin in our state schools, where there is now very little discipline or moral training.
Caning has been outlawed for more than 20 years. It could not, in law, be reintroduced unless the UK withdrew from the European Union and rescinded several international conventions we have foolishly signed.
So what are we waiting for?!
I am proud to be born in England. It is a truly great country, but like all countries it is flawed.
Can we do anything about the faults? Can we improve things? Well, it would certainly be patriotic to try.
So ... come on England!
Come ON!!
And I don't just mean the football...

• Post to:
•  del.icio.us
•  Digg
•  Newsvine
•  Nowpublic
•  Reddit