What the hell happened?

The single daftest concept ever thought of by man, outside of daytime TV quiz shows, is the idea of a 'decline in standards'. Anyone who's ever glanced at a copy of the Daily Express (is it me, or are they always there to read- albeit 2 days out of date- in chinese chippies?) will know that we are currently in the middle of one of these periodic but steady plummets into the seventh level of hell on a tidal wave of immigration, binge drinking, psychotic teenagers and foreign football managers. All this is in contrast, in the world of the Express and Daily Mail, to the moral fortitude of just thirty years ago, when the British nation was so bad at getting along with each other we ran out of electricity three days a week, or even the middle of the last century when everyone was polite, everyone helped their neighbours and only a few million people died from either being bombed, shot or gassed for not having blonde hair.

Unfortunately for the modern world's right-wing tabloids, who have to fill the pages between Diana conspiracy theories and waiting for Thatcher to die, the notion of Britian in terminal moral decline is nothing new. For example, read the following statements:

"England is marked by a cruel pestilence, so much injustice, so many illegitimate children- there is so much lechery and adultery"

"They wear parti-coloured tunics with short hoods, belts thickly studded with gold with knives called daggers suspended from pouches beneath them"

Sounds like an episode of Jeremy Kyle, doesn't it? A chav in a gaudily coloured hoodie, laced with bling, paraded in front of the nation for having countless illegitimate spawn whilst he's been inside most of his adult life for knifing someone. You can just see Kyle himself working up into a frenzy of bug-eyed, neck-veined righteousness as he pontificates on how the pathetic chunk in a tracksuit in front of him barely deserves to be allowed to keep breathing. Had he been a little older, Jeremy Kyle- or for that matter Richard Littlejohn, Kelvin Mackenzie or any Middle England firebrand could have penned those lines written above. But how much older would they have to have been? When did the "lechery and adultery" sweep England? When were those "parti-coloured tunics" running amock with their daggers?

Victorian times? 18th century, maybe? Bit earlier than that?

Actually, it was 1344.

Yup, these eerie forerunners of modern Britain are fast approaching their 700th birthday. How on Earth can there be a decline in the morality of the nation when we've not changed in the best part of a millennium? Never better, never worse, always the same, always British. And lest we forget that our 14th century chavs had the bubonic plague to deal with.

The Black Death was, by all accounts, a bit of a bastard. It killed indiscriminately with terrifying haste- essentially you got a cough, your goolies swelled up and then you died, all within 48 hours. And so did all your family. Half the population of Britain died in 18 months and then, 2 years later, what was left was nearly halved again. Most of London became a mass grave, anrachy was rife and everyone became convinced that God had decided humanity was a bit of a balls-up and decided to start again. Like an Etch-a-Sketch, if they'd been invented in the 1300's. Think about what life must have been like back then the next time a right-wing tabloid says we're going to hell in a handcart cause of the Turner Prize.

Staggeringly, The Black Death (and what a name that is, by the way) could have been much, much worse. Sure, the chances were high that you'd end up dead in a pit of corpses with hideously swollen nads but if you survived you came very close to an even worse fate. You nearly became Scottish.

Around the time the plague was scything through the villages of England, Scotland remained rather untouched by the whole thing. This was, after all, shortly after Bannockburn when they'd sent proud Edward homeward to think again and therefore trade and contact between the nations was scarce- stopping the disease-carrying fleas nipping on some prime Scotch beef. The chaps up North did, however, get word that England was on it's knees and decided to make hay while the sun shined and invade. A huge army massed at Selkirk Forest- ready to march south and open up a (Tennent's Special) can of whoop-ass all the way to Westminster.

As the hordes were gathering, the Scots sent a few spies down to Berwick to see what was going on and get some intelligence before the attacks began. Unfortunately, the town was experiencing a full on case of the buboles which the spies promptly contracted. They returned to Selkirk Forest, told the chiefs what was happening down South, coughed a bit, watched their groins go supernova and promptly dropped down dead. Within a week, half the troops had done the same thing and the whole operation was called off- allowing the survivors to head back to their towns and villages taking the plague with them. The Scots inflicted on themselves a crippling defeat of such magnitude it would take 300 years before the English could do just as much damage at Culloden.

So remember, the next time you're lead to believe that all is lost and Britain has essentially turned into Sodom and Gommorah with chlamydia, it has pretty much been for the whole time-span of human civilisation, a whole lot worse. Mind you, the rats that carried the plague did arrive in this country on container ships from Asia via the ports of Europe. So at least the Express could still have blamed immigrants for everything.