One result of the growth in the size of government has been UK citizens increasingly refusing to take responsibility for or indeed possibly not knowing what the concept of personal responsibility is.

So much spoon feeding of the population now takes place nothing seems to be anyone's fault any more, always someone else's.

A central part of PM Cameron's 'big society' should perhaps be a PR campaign to reawaken people's minds to the fact that they and they alone are responsible for their own actions.

The latest middle east crisis is just the latest event the that amply illustrates the point.

One of the main news channels yesterday interviewed a woman who had just arrived for her holiday in Tunisia to discover the airport crammed with people trying to leave.

To her surprise there was a revolution going on, gunfire echoing around the building and burning cars in the streets.

Why hadn't anybody told her? Why had the tour company flown her out there? Why hadn't the Foreign Office told her anything?

If she had bothered to take any interest in the destination she was visiting she would have known this had been going on for days. But it would appear for all she knew it was just destination sun and sand blissfully unaware or caring if it was Tunis or Turkey.

This women was geniunely angry that someone hadn't told her what the situation was like. As if she expected a personal call from the British Ambassador phoning her on the hour to inform her what the chances were of being shot in the street.

In these days of instant information, where the very latest news can be had at the touch of a button there is no excuse for being so ignorant of what's going, anywhere. But for far too many the attitude seems to be why bother, someone else will do it for me.