But perhaps there is still time to change the Zeitgeist

But perhaps there is still time to change the Zeitgeist.For, nowadays, the vogue is for moralising, stopping things, banning things, denouncing things, a V-chip planted in the public mind to censor and censure every thought that may not pass the Disney test. Everywhere, thresholds and watersheds are being drawn in, horizons lowered, old properties brought out of the attic and dusted down. All change is a threat, not a chance, and the future holds nothing but fear. The very word "progress" rings out as a term from a long-dead political lexicon.

Retro-values rule - at least in public.And yet the Sixties live on in the private sphere. In private, people continue to behave as before - sex, divorce, cohabitation, soft drugs, abortion and self-determination. Liberal tolerance of the behaviour of their own nearest and dearest contrasts so strangely with the megaphone morals people choose to devour in most of the press. We live in contradictory and ambivalent times.Why, even the Archbishop of Canterbury exhibited these same confusions in his pre-Christmas message on GMTV yesterday.

He warned about the loss of traditional moral values and the advent of a "DIY morality". He said that individual should not decide their own morality. "I want to remind people there is such a thing as objective morality." Then he called for "faithfulness in marriage or in a single lifestyle". (What did he mean? He has the same felicity with words as our Prime Minister.) But, yet again, he refused to criticise the most famous adulterer in his flock, Prince Charles: "He has struggled as many people struggle, with broken relationships." Well, there is moral relativism for you Where is the "objective morality" in that? Quite right too. The Prince deserves the same understanding we afford to our friends. That is tolerance and fairness, not moral laxity.DIY is exactly what we should bring our children up to do. Trust no nostrums, follow no leader blindly, obey no orders without thought, listen to Jiminy Cricket - "Always let your conscience be your guide." Oh, there may have been a lot of dope and sex in the Sixties, but we were priggish too, about the moral evils in the wicked world around us.