SOUL great Otis Redding sang about it in the mid-Sixties and Tony Blair has started going on about it again. Yes, respect is the word.

This is a comfortable theme for Mr Blair and a drum he has returned to bang on many occasions, usually when demanding greater respect from young people, or 'thugs' as they are known in today's over-heated parlance.

I've written before about the way we demonise young people, so I won't return directly to that topic. It's just worth remembering that while some teenagers may be demons, most of them are no such thing.

So in the context of Mr Blair's third term topic, it is fair enough to expect respect from young people, so long as we respect them back in return.

Yet this idea of respect is deep and complex, and goes much further than yobbish youths or nuisance neighbours. There is an argument that we are less respectful in general nowadays. I'm not fully convinced, but it is worth pursuing. A general lack of respect could be down to what one commentator has described as the "aggressive individualism" of our culture, in which we believe that the satisfaction of the individual is more important than anything else in society.

If we are rude to other others it is because we are too busy chasing after what we want to notice anyone else. New Labour has added to this lack of respect by creating its own culture of contempt, in which contrary views - from the Iraq war downwards - are dismissed impatiently.

Respect can be courtesy for others and admiration for what they have, in terms of power, looks, skills, goods or whatever. That much seems straightforward enough, until you start to look around.

How, for example, do we fit the idea of respect round watching a TV programme in which competitive strangers are cooped up together and encouraged to out-do each other in eccentric, argumentative or lewd behaviour?

Yes, I am talking about Channel 4's Big Brother, which is back with us and again offers us a warped mirror in which to admire ourselves.

Is this vain and stupid programme the perfect image for the lack of respect in modern society? Well, yes and no. It does showcase behaviour that would have been unthinkable in earlier generations - or certainly in public and on the telly.

Yet there is a grim fascination in watching this annual freak show and I can't loftily dismiss it for the guilty reason that I can't resist dipping in and out. Just to see what's happening, not that I approve or anything.

If respect has become a political issue, especially in relation to anti-social behaviour and the new police powers - introduced in York last week - to disperse groups of two or more youths, there is an irony here too. The political process in this country hardly respects the individual voter while we still persist with the first-past-the-post electoral system. Until there is some form of proportional representation, in which every vote counts for something, then more people will opt out, feeling there is a lack of respect for what they think.

Lack of respect can come smartly suited too, from City wide-boys who earn far too much to huntsmen storming the House of Commons.

Last week, the hunt supporters who invaded the Commons to protest against the ban on fox hunting escaped with a conditional discharge.

What would the outcome have been if Otis Ferry and friends - including Richard Wakeham from York - were just knotty-haired anti-hunting anarchists with rings in their noses?

Would they have been dealt with so leniently or was the wrong sort of respect paid to these well-off protesters?

The perceived lack of respect is linked to the slow death of deference. And a good thing too.

The old system of respecting someone purely because they were 'better' than us, more socially elevated or from sounder stock, is no longer fit for the modern world.

So there is much to explore in this respect business, even if I am minded to side with Otis rather than Tony.

Updated: 09:34 Thursday, June 02, 2005