WHEN the oil depot blew up at Hemel on Sunday, I thought it was the end of the world.

I saw the sky fill with smoke from my home in High Wycombe and believed Armageddon was finally here.

But then again, I constantly think the world's going to end. And, in many ways, it has already.

All the values we hold dear are slowly being eroded as society plunges new depths of depravity each day.

I can hardly bear to watch the news for all the gloom and despair it brings. If it's not a pillar of society being arrested for child paedophilia, then it's a rape, a murder or an unprovoked assault.

Nothing is sacred any longer. There no longer are any limits on morality as every swear word, every sexual act, and almost every crime is defended.

Children don't talk to each other any more, but either stay in their room playing computer games or stand yelling at passers-by on street corners.

And no, sorry, it never used to be like this in my generation. Times were hard and often brutal but there was respect.

This has been eroded by the soft "me, me, me" society where everyone is a victim, apart from the old ladies who get beaten up and left in the gutter.

But what do our rulers expect when they fail to provide us with enough police, when they shut our community hubs and they close down our libraries?

In effect, they have opted to destroy our community spirit and replace it with a soulless centralisation.

No one cares any longer about each other and the meaning has gone out of so many lives. If that explosion on Sunday had really been Armageddon, I have to beg the question: Would there really have been anything in society worth saving?