THE older I get the more I wonder whether modern society is underpinned by any basic principle other than entitlement?

As a child the Ten Commandments were drummed into us at school and Sunday school, later supplemented by a plethora of traditional wisdom such as ‘neither a borrower nor a lender be’ and ‘early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise’.

The adage I found to be most useful was that given to me by my father (a teenaged private throughout the First World War and RE colonel in the Second World War) when I departed for Army National Service: ‘Keep your eyes, ears and bowels open and your mouth shut’.

I would now add ‘and your finger off the ‘send’ button’.

A V Martin,

Westfield Close.

Wigginton, York