We live in the age of Snitches and Sneaks
Dr Vernon Coleman MB ChB DSc
VernonColeman.com

When I was young (many years ago, I admit) it was considered bad form to snitch on anyone. At school, a teacher might threaten to keep the whole class in detention if someone didn’t tell him who’d buried the exploding caps under the tobacco packed down neatly in his pipe bowl. But no one would snitch and we’d all share the punishment with pride. Today, sneaking and snitching are encouraged and are an essential part of `social credit’. The latest fashion for reporting any slight or mild offence or even imagined to the police is also part of `social credit’. And the authorities positively encourage the public to see offence in every word or gesture and make their complaints accordingly. Anyone accused of causing `distress’ to a complainant (usually described as a victim) may be questioned, harassed, arrested and tossed into a cell for 24 hours to decourager les autres. We live in discouraging times and things are, I fear, only going to get worse.The following paragraphs appear in my book `Social Credit: Nightmare on your street’.
Snitches and Sneaks—We already live in the age of the snitch and the sneak. Governments everywhere are constantly bringing in new laws to encourage people to ‘tell’ on their friends, neighbours and workmates. The aim, of course, is to ensure that none of us trusts anyone else.
And in this new world of course, it only takes one complaint to produce a result.
A hotel I enjoyed visiting because it had a huge open fireplace with crackling logs burning throughout the winter got rid of its open fire and replaced it with a log burner – with the doors always safely shut. The manager told me that the local council had received one complaint from a visitor who felt that it was dangerous to have an open fireplace. And so, on instructions from a man (or woman) in a cheap suit, the hotel had installed the log burner.
A church where bells have rung out for 500 years had to stop all bell ringing after the local council received a single complaint from someone who had bought a house within earshot of the bells.
A motor racing circuit which had held meetings for half a century, had to dramatically limit its events because of a newcomer to the area had complained to the council about the noise.