Crumbling respect

The respect for authority figures that was the norm when I was growing up has gradually crumbled over the years. Crumbled so far in fact that it has almost gone into reverse, with more and more people saying they distrust "experts" and other authority figures and intent on going their own way.

When I was young, people generally submitted to every sort of authority figure. Be they doctors, teachers, parents, government ministers, civil servants or police officers, we did what they asked us to do because obviously we were ignorant young dimwits and they were older and wiser.

That attitude slowly caved in and people started to question authority figures and the idea that they knew best. Did they really know best or were they fallible individuals who could get things horribly wrong as well as totally right?

Confidence in experts has been shaken by a constant succession of disasters and blunders. Like the inferno at Grenfell Tower, which was covered in inflammable cladding. Like incompetent surgeons who leave patients in agony. Like houses that are knowingly built on flood plains.

Bit by bit automatic respect for authority figures has drained away as people got the confidence to challenge what they said. And quite right too. Instead of assuming they won't be questioned, they have to justify their opinions and take people's scepticism into account.

That questioning can be overdone of course. Those people who say they never trust an expert and rely on their own judgment are taking distrust too far. They're often grossly misinformed and horribly wrong themselves.

We need a happy medium where the opinions of experts aren't instantly dismissed but carefully examined and evaluated before we rely on them.

Trust

It's easy to take for granted in a relationship that your partner can be trusted - that they'll do what they say, behave the way you expect them to, and in general not present you with any nasty surprises.

I feel sorry for those women who can't trust their men an inch - who're never sure where they are or what they're doing, and always suspect they're up to something disturbing or illegal or shameful. They're forever on tenterhooks, wondering what fresh embarrassments are on the way (I guess there are also men who can't trust their women but far fewer of them).

Jenny and I have complete trust in each other. We don't dread finding out something shocking about the other person.

Jenny knows I'm not going to raid our savings and disappear into the night, or develop some insatiable addiction to gambling or alcohol or drugs or porn, or burn the house down, or wreck the car, or run off with a buxom blonde twenty years younger, or live in a cave seeking spiritual enlightenment, or smash windows in Whitehall, or join the British National Front.

She knows I value her company and won't be down the pub every evening with my mates, discussing football, making misogynist jokes, ranting about immigrants, getting blind drunk, and then heaving a sigh and saying "Oh well, I suppose I'd better be getting back to the old ball and chain."

I guess there are women who've lost all trust in their men but stick with them anyhow, rather than start afresh with a new partner who might turn out to be equally untrustworthy. After all, could they ever trust a man again?

It's very easy to destroy trust and very hard to rebuild it.

All about beards

Emma Brockes in the Guardian says she's always trusted men with beards. And a study by the University of Texas backs her up, finding that salesmen with beards are seen as more trustworthy than those without.

She has argued with friends about it. Some see beards as a cover-up - what's the guy hiding? But to her they mean respectability.

People are very polarised about men with beards. In general, they either love them or hate them. The pro camp like their masculinity and find the man more attractive than his hairless mates. The anti faction find them pointless and distinctly off-putting. Women may find kissing less enjoyable if they're negotiating a thicket of hair.

Personally, as you know, I'm not keen on beards. I had one briefly in the seventies when I fancied the John Lennon look, but I've been clean-shaven ever since. Those men who grow their beards to absurd lengths just look ridiculous.

Also, beards need constant upkeep. They have to be trimmed, they have to be kept clean, bits of food get stuck in them. Who knows what you might be kissing? And they can be horribly itchy.

But beards are very fashionable nowadays. I see more and more men with them. Maybe they simply can't be bothered to shave. Maybe their partners prefer them with beards. Maybe they're just proving they're man enough to grow one. Or maybe their religion requires men to have beards.

Fashions come and go, though. Apparently in the mid 18th-century being clean-shaven was seen as the height of manly sophistication, and very few men had beards. But facial hair was so important to the Victorians that many men, unable to grow their own, were forced to buy false beards and moustaches.

So would I trust a salesman with a beard more than one without? No, it makes no difference to me. What I'm looking for is a trustworthy product.

Trust eroded

It seems the police are increasingly not pursuing so-called petty crimes like burglary, theft and minor assault. And the police watchdog, the Inspector of Constabulary, says this is corroding the public's trust in the police.

As a result, the public are often not reporting such crimes, assuming nothing much will be done about them.

Well, to be fair to the police, what do people honestly expect? Do they really think the police can solve every crime that comes their way? Do they really think all that's needed is a bit of hard graft and shrewd detective work?

Are they serious? If a random stranger has picked your house to burgle or your car to break into, how the heck do you identify that random stranger? Unless they've left something incriminating behind them, like their wallet or a shop receipt, where on earth do the police start looking?

If nobody has actually seen the burglar or car thief, there's not even a photo or description to go by. So you're looking for a needle in a haystack.

I'm sure the victim would love to see the offender getting his just desserts in a courtroom, but let's face it, it's unlikely.

It makes perfect sense to me that the police prioritise really serious crimes like domestic violence or fraud or arson. Anyone worried about being burgled should take out adequate insurance to cover the possibility. And get decent locks on all their doors and windows.

Luckily Jenny and I have seldom been crime victims. We've never been burgled and we've only experienced car thefts twice. And I was mugged once. We never expected the police to find the culprits. We just put it down to bad luck and moved on.

Maybe Dixon of Dock Green* was able to magically nab the villains. But that wasn't real-life, it was TV make-believe.

*Long-running police TV series from 1955 to 1976.

A loss of trust

I used to be an enthusiastic supporter of charities. In fact I've worked for several, including Asthma UK and Diabetes UK. But all the charity scandals in recent years have drained my enthusiasm and turned it into a wary scepticism.

It seems that the public generally now have less faith in charities. The reputation of several charities has plummeted, and people are much more selective about who they give money to.

It's sobering to sum up all the recent misconduct:

• Oxfam staff sexually exploiting victims of the Haiti earthquake in 2010
• Women in Syrian refugee camps forced into sex by UN aid workers
• The suicide of 92-year-old poppy seller Olive Cooke, after being deluged with begging letters from charities
• Chuggers (charity muggers) asking people for donations in the street
• Huge financial irregularities at Kids Company, which had to close down
• Direct debit "donations" taken from Alzheimer's sufferer Joseph Frost
• Excessive spending on administration
• Chief Executive salaries as high as £140,000

The only charities I donate to now are ones that are well-known and not tainted (as far as I know) by any unethical or pushy behaviour. Like St John Ambulance and the Salvation Army.

When I worked at Diabetes UK I was aware money was sometimes being wasted, for example on London staff meetings for employees across the UK, whose hotels and transport (including flights from Northern Ireland) were paid for by the charity. I found the meetings almost entirely unproductive, but attendance was compulsory.

Charities have become big business, and it seems that some of them are adopting the behaviour of big business and doing whatever they can get away with.

Baroness Stowell, Chair of the Charity Commission, says the public no longer trust charities any more than a stranger in the street. Well, a bit exaggerated perhaps, but there's some truth in that. And once lost, trust isn't easily regained.

Pic: Olive Cooke with begging letters

PS: One organisation I regularly donate to is Wikipedia. I use it virtually every day and I want to make sure it keeps going.

Just trust me

It surprises me to realise there's no official system for monitoring the carrying-out of wills, for ensuring the right amount of money goes to the various recipients and there's no funny business going on, nobody siphoning off large sums they're not entitled to.

As the executor of my mum's will, it's entirely up to me to make sure the money is passed on to the three beneficiaries as it should be, and I'm not stealthily whisking the odd £10,000 into my own bank account. As far as I know nobody in authority is going to check I'm doing things properly.

My mum left a lot of money to her half-brother. None of the family have met him and nobody, including him, knew he had been left any money. We could in theory have ignored the legacy and divided it between the rest of us. Or we could have told him he'd only been left £100. Who would know? How would the long arm of the law ever find out? But of course we're all honest and he'll get what he's meant to get.

As far as I can see, an irregularity only comes to light if someone challenges the will and claims some sort of fraud. And they can only do that if they've seen the will. If they haven't seen it, they would have to contact the probate registry, which has custody of every original will.

It's also entirely up to me to declare the right value of my mum's estate to the tax authorities. I haven't been asked for documentary proof, so I could in theory have undervalued her estate by thousands of pounds, paid a lot less tax, and passed on more money to the beneficiaries. But again I'm honest so I told the truth. Perhaps the tax people make secret checks with the banks to confirm what I've told them?

All I can say is that a lot of people are simply trusting me to do things properly. Which is remarkable in a society where constant suspicion is widespread.

Trust me

I'm good at keeping secrets. I'm good at being tight-lipped. You can trust me with your most private thoughts, your worst fears, your most emb-arrassing moments, and they'll be safe with me. Far from talking too much, I'm more likely to be saying nothing at all.

Over the years I've been privy to all sorts of odd secrets, and I've never divulged any of them. I'm not a gossip, not an attention-seeker, not a rumour-monger. I appreciate that people have trusted me with something very personal and I'm not going to betray their trust.

I've heard about all manner of things - devastating panic attacks, social anxiety, agoraphobia, strange sexual habits, over-large breasts, breast reduction surgery, illegal drugs, gun ownership, excessive body hair, heavy periods. Only once have I heard about an affair, even though affairs are commonplace. And nobody has confessed to a violent husband. Perhaps I just move in very ethical circles where such things simply don't happen. Yeah, right.

Likewise I've revealed my own deepest secrets to other people, trusting they won't go any further. On the whole my trust has been justified and very seldom have I been betrayed. Which is just as well if I've moved on and I now think of whatever it was I blurted out ten years ago as mortifying idiocy.

I'm amazed at those people who merrily spill out absolutely everything to absolutely everybody. People who seem to be embarrassed by nothing and happy for the entire world to peer into their soul. It's all very entertaining and eye-opening but how can they do it? Are they pioneering a new form of total openness, or are they just unremitting narcissists?

Of course there's not much you can keep secret from your partner. Sooner or later they'll uncover all the weird and tawdry aspects of your character. And then you'll find out if they really love you warts and all. Or whether they run for the hills.

The secret's out

Over the 66 years of my life, I've confided some very intimate, very personal thoughts and feelings to other people. Mainly to Jenny but also to other close and trusted friends.

Have I ever regretted such confessions? Strangely enough, I haven't. I can't recall anything that had damaging consequences or made me feel a reckless idiot.

Other people seem to do it all the time. Those familiar phrases - "Me and my big mouth", "I open my mouth and put my foot in it", "Did I say that out loud?"

Well, I don't use them myself. Have I, for example, ever been unfair to someone, shocked or horrified someone, diminished myself, exposed my weaknesses and frailties? Yes, I've done the last. But I'm happy to do that with people I trust.

Have I revealed things that are simply too private and personal to be shared? I don't think so. Someone can only get to know me properly if I tell them everything that goes on inside me. And that means everything.

There are people I haven't seen for decades who know quite mind-boggling things about me, but I'm not bothered. I doubt they've abused my trust in them, and even if they have, even if they've gossiped shamelessly, it'll be to people I don't know who can't do me any harm.

Then again, I don't need to have confessed to anything. There are glaring shortcomings I've revealed simply in the course of everyday life - sexual hang-ups, social ineptness, nasty habits, chronic self-doubts. But so what? Why be embarrassed that people have stumbled on awkward faults? They have just as many themselves.

I've got nothing to hide. My only worry is what others will do with the information. But by and large my trust hasn't been misplaced.

A lack of trust

There are people I trust completely, people I would share anything with, however embarrass-ing or painful or mean or pathetic or peculiar. People who will sympathise, understand, give helpful advice, and also keep it all to themselves. People I feel safe with.

When it comes to people I don't trust, though, I share absolutely nothing of any importance to me, I'm extremely cautious and I stick carefully to neutral topics. And I lie. It's frightening how much I lie rather than tell them the unvarnished truth.

I pretend to be polite and courteous when I'm really seething with rage and dying to make some vitriolic comment. I pretend to be ultra-masculine when I'm really feeling girly and giggly. I pretend to be competent and capable when I feel like I'm fucking up left right and centre. I pretend to be enthusiastic about things I couldn't care less about.

Anything to preserve a bland, anodyne atmosphere that doesn't tempt me to reveal what I don't want to reveal. Anything to ensure the real me is securely locked up and hidden away, not to be glimpsed by unsympathetic eyes.

I hate it when I have to spend so much time lying and pretending. But what else can I do? I don't think I'm especially mistrustful of others. But with certain people, I just sense instantly that to be frank with them about anything at all would be dangerous. They want me to conform to a certain image, a certain role, and if I said anything that contradicted that image, they wouldn't like it. So I keep everything well buttoned-up.

It's especially hard to trust people in today's opinionated society, when we're all encouraged to sneer and scoff at things we barely understand. Who will take the trouble to listen to me properly, to hear me out, to do justice to my most delicate disclosures, when knee-jerk reactions are the order of the day?

I don't bare my soul in a hurry.

"I don't trust easily. So when I tell you 'I trust you' please don't make me regret it" - J Cole

A whiff of paranoia

In general I'm not a paranoid person. I trust people. I believe in them. I don't assume they're going to cheat me or betray me. I don't secretly question their intentions towards me. I don't imagine they're full of hidden hatreds and grudges. But with one exception - I'm very paranoid about friendships.

Even with a long-established friendship, when I should have every confidence that the other person is not just going to dump me overnight, I still get fretful and anxious and imagine the worst if there's too long a silence, or if I keep leaving messages and they're not returned.

Supposedly this is a particularly female trait. Women need constant reassurance that the relationship is still healthy, that the other person still likes/ loves them and isn't drifting away. Whereas a bloke is always sure the relationship is solid as a rock and doesn't bat an eyelid if there's no contact for weeks.

Well, how female am I, then. If there's too long a silence my imagination runs riot. He/ she has gone off me, or I said something offensive, or I'm boring, or too needy. I dream up a dozen reasons why I must have put my foot in it and that's the end of a beautiful friendship.

Then of course the other person contacts me and just carries on as normal without the slightest hint of anything untoward. And I realise my feverish imaginings were just that - feverish imaginings.

Some day I'll learn to have more faith in my friendships and not overreact to quite routine interruptions and silences. I'll learn that friendships are more durable than I think, that they don't just crumble over some tactless remark or tetchy outburst. Good friends are not that fickle.

Spilling the beans

In this era of supposed personal frankness, when people gush out their intimate thoughts and feelings to any passing journalist or TV presenter, you might think that no one has anything left to hide any more, that it’s all out there for instant public consumption.

I think not. For every person who spills the beans, there are ten others who’re more reticent and still keep an awful lot to themselves. Most of us don’t trust other people to be sympathetic to our innermost secrets, be they embarrassing, weird, disgusting or just incomprehensible.

The fact is that there are plenty of people only too willing to exploit other people’s weaknesses and eccentricities for their own personal gain or entertainment, and those uninhibited souls who lay their entire life on the table for others to pick at should either have a very thick skin or be prepared for a rather painful public mauling.

Even routine oddities like fear of flying, or fear of public speaking, or a passion for pickled onions, are often concealed in case of scorn or ridicule. As for the more rarified traits like social phobia or aversion to sex or hating to be watched, very few people would be trusted with those. Maybe only our partners, who’re going to find out sooner or later anyway.

It may be that other people are more sympathetic to those things than we imagine, but we daren’t risk telling the wrong person and being treated as some kind of freak show.

It may be that our shameful secrets are not as shameful as we think. But the longer we hide something, the more we prevent others from accepting and neutralising it, the more peculiar and monstrous it becomes, until the very idea of exposing it to others is unthinkable. We convince ourselves we’re so warped that if we confess all nobody will ever speak to us again.

We probably all need a personal therapist, someone we can confide in without fear of a negative reaction, someone who’ll listen without judging, someone who’ll help us to understand what we are rather than expecting us to be normal. With the best will in the world, even the closest and most trusted friend isn’t necessarily that dispassionate and all-embracing.

Dishonesty

Come on, admit it, you're a wee bit dishonest, aren't you? Only a wee bit. Just now and again.

According to this handy quiz*, I'm extremely dishonest. Or that's how they see it. As I see it, I bend the rules when I think it's justified. Being systematically dishonest is something quite different.

Anyhow, how would you score for dishonesty? Do you think the following are ever justified?

1) Fare-dodging on public transport
2) Cheating on taxes
3) Speeding
4) Keeping money found in the street
5) Lying in your own interests
6) Not reporting accidental damage to a car
7) Dumping litter in a public place
8) Driving under the influence of alcohol
9) Inventing things on a job application
10) Buying something you know is stolen

I don't think 6,8, 9 or 10 are ever acceptable, but I think the others are sometimes okay, depending on the circumstances. If I find a £10 note in the street, and it's highly unlikely anyone would bother to claim it at a police station, then I pocket it. So would 80% of the population. Of course it's technically dishonest but in reality it's unimportant.

I think the type of dishonesty that really matters, and which funnily enough they don't mention, is dishonesty to your loved ones and friends. To lie to your partner about a secret bank account, or a secret lover, or a secret porn stash, is pretty shabby. That I would never do, not that I have any of those anyway. But without complete trust between you and those close to you, relationships are fatally damaged.

As for dishonesty among prominent public figures, which seems to be increasing at an alarming rate, let's not even go there. We'd be at it all day.

* Shamelessly and dishonestly filched from The Independent

A secret stash

People hide all sorts of things from their partners. Phobias, wild crushes, midnight binges, body hair. And quite often, it seems, secret savings accounts.

A new study says that one in five men and one in ten women have private stashes they don't reveal, averaging £2000 but sometimes a lot more.

They have all sorts of reasons for squirrelling it away. In case the relationship fails, because it's none of their partner's business, because it gives them some financial independence, and for men because a stash of cash makes them feel more masculine.

Those high-earning bankers in the City of London are said to be particularly prone to hiding large chunks of their earnings from their partners. It must be pretty easy, with such astronomical sums flying in all directions.

There's no way Jenny or I would have secret accounts. We've had joint accounts for many years and whatever's in them belongs quite clearly to both of us. When we first met I had my own bank account with quite a sizeable sum in it (which Jenny knew about) but we eventually pooled all our money.

I suppose if you genuinely think your relationship might collapse, then having some private savings is a sensible precaution, to enable you to start afresh. But I can't see any other good reason for salting away money your partner doesn't know about.

To me it suggests terrible deceit and lack of trust, keeping something very important from them because they might not approve. And if you're hiding something so significant, what else might you be hiding that they ought to know about? A taste for secrecy can spread into umpteen areas, like a virus, until deceit becomes routine.

Trust

Friendship and trust are so closely linked. If you find it hard to trust people, it's going to be hard to make friends.

You have to believe the other person's basically good-natured and caring, that they'll treat you decently and won't hurt you or betray you. If you've had a lot of bad experiences with people and that confidence has been undermined, making friends becomes harder.

My trust in people was badly damaged as a child. I had a belligerent, cantankerous father who constantly criticised me and seldom encouraged me. Later I was sent to a boarding school where I was regularly bullied and made to feel I didn't fit in and was somehow odd.

By my late teens I had lost much of my trust in people and I no longer assumed they would treat me well. They had to do a lot to convince me they were well-meaning and not going to belittle me or look down on me. The slightest sign of condescension and I would withdraw. Opening up and being myself no longer came naturally.

You might think such distrust would gradually disappear, that I would meet people who would restore my trust and I could start to make normal friendships like anyone else. But that never really happened and my distrust stubbornly lingered. Occasionally I meet people so transparently warm-hearted my suspicions melt for a while, but sooner or later they return.

The fact is I've never fully revealed myself to anyone except Jenny. Large parts of me are forever hidden, like the dark side of the moon. And it's too late now to expect any radical change.

Unfortunately there are plenty of parents and schools out there still damaging children's sense of trust without realising the long-term consequences - possibly an entire lifetime of struggling to make the sort of relationships that luckier people just take for granted. We need to take the emotional well-being of children a lot more seriously.