Jim Parker: The world has gone bonkers - but do we really care?

We seem to have lost all sense of decency, care and common courtesy for one another in a 'me-me and take-take' generation where PC rules the roost and has gone quackers (am I allowed to say that? Don't want to upset the hen and duck lovers).
I heard a story on the news the other night (blimey how depressing and celebrity riddled are the headlines these days and that is coming from a journalist of almost 50 years, half of which was covering crime) - evidently, one in six of our animal species are in danger of becoming extinct because of what we are doing to our planet so we're not doing a bad job on wrecking that either. Do we care?
This mood of melancholy - don't worry it will pass - comes after a few incidents in the past couple of weeks that have left me wondering what kind of world my grand-kids have to look forward to as they grow up.
The latest was the other night in Babbacombe Road, Torquay. I was just going for a quiet drive when, as I passed in front of the speed camera going past the old Palace Hotel site, a car approached at speed on the other side of the road - except he or she wasn't on the other side. He was on my side and heading straight into me. In a moment I managed to swerve up on to the pavement as the mad motorist flashed by. If there had been no room to get out of the way I honestly believe I would not be sat here writing this column. Asleep? Drunk, drugged up. Simply careless. Whoever was in that car didn't care less and just drove on.
You are all aware of my son's nightmare holiday with his family on the Greek islands where he feared for their lives as they were trapped in their flood-hit holiday apartment. They are still waiting to hear from the tour operators to see if they care about what happened....
Then you have the sad story of the elderly couple we came across while going for a walk on Torquay the other weekend.
You could see the husband, in his mid to late 70s, was beside himself with anxiety and a look of being lost and not knowing what to do. His wife was sat on a seat inside a bus shelter suffering what was believed to be a mini-stroke.
We asked if he had called an ambulance. He had and was told it could be two to three hours before one arrived. Remember, his wife was having a stroke where we keep getting told time is crucial. I then dialled 999 and explained the situation. The call handler was surprised the gentleman had been told 'two to three hours' - evidently for non-life threatening calls it should be 'several hours'.
That weekend I saw a local football report where one game was abandoned after a player broke a leg in two places. There was no ambulance available so he was put in the back of estate car and driven to A&E. Can you imagine the agony and pain he must have suffered?
The woman on the seafront HAD suffered a stroke. She was in hospital for three days before gladly being allowed home.
A spokesman for the South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust couldn't comment on specific cases she said there were guidelines people could follow to help:
*In a life-threatening emergency, dial 999 and request an ambulance. For non-life-threatening emergencies, people can access appropriate care by visiting NHS 111 online, contacting their GP or getting advice from a pharmacy.
*If you’re waiting for an ambulance, please don’t call 999 back - unless the patient’s condition has deteriorated or you no longer need an ambulance - to ask when one will arrive, these details can’t be provided, as ambulances are sent to patients with the most life-threatening conditions first.
*Knowing how to describe your exact location in a remote or rural area by using What3Words – a free app which converts your location into a unique three word address - so the emergency services can find you.
Thanks for that and I am really not blaming our health service, paradmedics, GPs, doctors, nurses and all our heroic life-savers because that is exactly what they are.
I also get we have issues with staffing, people calling ambulances when they shouldn't or going to A&E when they don't need to - a lot of the time because they can't get to see a GP - bed blocking and recruitment issues in our care home sector all under immense pressure as more and more people are living longer. But an elderly couple left helpless on the seafront? A man with a badly broken leg in the back of a car? The health service is broken.
These kind of things would have never happened years ago. Or am I getting old? Do people really care?