As a Victor Meldrew, I've long moaned Britain's gone to the dogs. But in truth life is much better (bad manners apart!)

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Like quite a few others of her generation, my late mother used to say that she looked back on the Second World War as the most wonderful time of her life.

She always said she felt bad about admitting it, because she knew that for millions it was a time of unimaginable suffering and privation, the grimmest hour in our planet’s history.

But she was 12 when the war broke out and 18 when it ended — and the young see things quite differently.

Reflection: Like quite a few others of her generation, Tom Utley's late mother used to say that she looked back on the Second World War as the most wonderful time of her life (file picture)

As a teenager living in central London throughout the Blitz, and later tending wounded soldiers as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse, she would have had plenty to complain about if she’d been the complaining type.

The food was filthy (how she would have laughed at today’s squeamishness about horseburgers), the hospital matron fierce, the clothes hideous and hard to come by — and she must have had many moments of terror as the bombs rained down. 

But looking back, she recalled only the excitement in the danger, the rapture of waking up alive in the morning and, above all, the wave of fellow-feeling that swept up so many Londoners in its path.

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In her recollection, people were just incredibly nice to each other — united, I suppose, by the shared peril, the common cause and the Dunkirk Spirit.

Now, memory is selective, and I dare say that my mother’s wartime life wasn’t quite as rosy at the time as it seemed to her in retrospect. Nevertheless, when she said that she enjoyed it I suspect that, on balance, she remembered correctly.

This was not, of course, because things were better in the war years, but simply because they were the years of her youth. After all, you don’t need me to tell you that the young tend to feel their pleasures more keenly than us middle-aged Victor Meldrews. Disruptions to life’s routine seem more fun to them, and the problems of the wider world weigh least heavily on those with the fewest responsibilities.

Years of youth: Disruptions to life's routine seem more fun to the young, it can only be for similar reasons that Tom Utley has the fondest memories of Ted Heath's Three-Day Week

Indeed, it can only be for similar reasons that I have the fondest memories of Ted Heath’s Three-Day Week (although I’m not pretending for one second that the hardships we faced during those three winter months in 1974 were remotely comparable to the privations of wartime).

If the same thing were to happen today, I’d be the first to curse the cold, the blackouts and the closure of all TV stations (there were only three) after 10.30pm. 

But looking back, what I remember is relishing every power cut and the excuse it brought to perform my public duty, impressed upon me by the Government, of sharing my bath by candlelight with one of my sister’s schoolfriends. Oh, happy days!

I cannot say I was surprised, therefore, by this week’s news that many millions of us believe all sorts of things — from manners to the weather, doctors, TV programmes, pubs, children’s behaviour, police officers, music, banks, politicians and, yes, sex — were better back in the old days than they are now. As I’ve suggested, this must be partly because the human memory tends to preserve pleasures more effectively than pain. 

But the main reason, I reckon, lies in the one thing that all 1,000 respondents to the Ask Jeeves survey have in common: whatever their ages, the incontrovertible fact is that they are all older now than they were in the rose-tinted time, whenever it was, on which they look back.

Some things which have become demonstrably much worse - such as the traffic and the postal service - didn't appear among the top ten moans

So it may well be that they looked up to certain professionals, or enjoyed things such as pop music or pubs, more when they were younger than they do today. But that does not necessarily mean that people and things have become worse as the years have passed.

I confess that when I first read yesterday’s report, old curmudgeon that I am, I found myself nodding furiously in agreement with the pessimists, putting mental ticks beside most of their nominations for aspects of life that have gone to the dogs.

My only surprise was that some things which have become demonstrably much worse — such as the traffic and the postal service — didn’t appear among the top ten moans. But as I began to think more objectively, I realised that in almost every material way, things have actually become a whole lot better, year by year, since I was born in 1953.

True, the traffic is appalling these days. But that’s only because motoring, like air travel, has come within the reach of so many ordinary people. Meanwhile, the cars themselves have improved beyond compare since my childhood, when my siblings and I had to push our old Riley down the road every morning to jump-start it.

So, too, has the food on offer in pubs, restaurants and supermarkets, while advances in medicine have given decent lives to countless people who would have suffered appallingly in decades past.

As for banks, they’ve certainly abandoned their moral scruples — and if you’re looking for a good old-fashioned bank manager with the personal touch, you’ll hunt in vain unless you’re very lucky. But have we so quickly forgotten the huge convenience of being able to take out money from a cash machine, almost anywhere in the world?

It’s the same with communications. The Royal Mail may be sliding, helter-skelter, downhill. But the main reason for that is our new ability to send a 1,000-page report to Australia, free of charge, at the touch of a button on a computer keyboard.

The modern world: Have we so quickly forgotten the huge convenience of being able to take out money from a cash machine, almost anywhere in the world?

Improved beyond compare: Food on offer in restaurants has greatly improved, while advances in medicine have given decent lives to countless people who would have suffered appallingly in decades past

As for the economy in general, we’re constantly told that we’ve just been through the ‘worst recession since the 1930s’. But try telling that to anyone who actually remembers the hunger marches — or, indeed, to families who had to  struggle through the crises of the Sixties and Seventies.

Technically speaking, the economy may have shrunk more than it has for 70 years. But this time, the graph dipped from a dramatically higher base than ever before, making comparisons highly misleading.

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Nor is it only in material things that life has improved. True, social mobility shuddered to a standstill under Labour, while exams were remorselessly dumbed down. 

But the England in which I grew up was a far more class-ridden country than it is now, in which I blush to remember how millions despised others for no better reason than their accents, ethnic origins or the way they held cutlery.

Indeed, most of my sons’ generation would be justly horrified by social attitudes to class, race and sexual orientation which were deemed perfectly acceptable in the Fifties and Sixties. 

But there was one item, right at the top of the Ask Jeeves list, over which the pessimists have surely got it right. Indeed, it was the only one on which the majority of the respondents agreed — and a thumping two thirds of them at that.

Manners, they said, have been in steep decline over the years.

If I read their thoughts correctly, they are thinking not only of the common courtesies of ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. They are thinking more of a wider selfishness of people wrapped up in their own worlds, with no consideration for anyone else’s existence — whether plugged into their iPods as they barge down the street, firing abuse at strangers over Twitter or bawling into mobile telephones on the train.

Ordinary kindnesses are on the wane, from giving up seats to expectant mothers to checking that your vulnerable neighbours are all right.

Ageing parents are shunted off into care homes, never to be visited, while the feckless inflict appalling levels of neglect on their children.

Is part of the problem that the more material goods we possess, the more we lose sight of the immaterial? Or have we become so used to the idea that the welfare state will take responsibility for everything, that we forget our own duties to each other?

I don’t pretend to have the answers, but we are surely losing our fellow-feeling as the years go by.

Let’s just hope it won’t take another world war to get it back.