Name me the national institution people still have faith in. Tell me who’s not been scandal-hit, tarnished, tested and found wanted, or had a tired -gate suffix associated with them.
Across all these categories below there are good people, of course, yet in every one the mistakes and problems have been at least partly systematic. Some of the institutions in the frame have been in trouble for a while, but in no case does it feel like progress is being made.
Take politics – even before the MPs expenses scandal only 46% thought they weren’t at it, and that felt surprisingly high. The rule for Tories and Lib Dems appears to be this: fiddle your expenses and be back in government within eighteen months, dodge taxes and suck up to those you’re supposed to regulate and you’ll be promoted.
Equally, all but the most loyal cybernat would have to admit that going to court to protect non-existent legal advice hasn’t exactly boosted confidence. Politics as a whole, despite Euan McColm’s passionate plea today, is still utterly unloved by most people.
And there’s the police. I don’t subscribe to the “all cops are bastards” point of view, not least because I’ve met many who aren’t, but there’s a long list of people who’ve been lied about after their deaths, including the innocent victims of Hillsborough, Jean Charles de Menezes and Ian Tomlinson. We also hear a lot about Leveson, but I’m almost more interested in the outcome of Operation Elveden. Even the Tories don’t trust them: why else impose these absurd commissioners to oversee Chief Constables?
The media are also probably at their lowest ever level in the public eye, with this week’s focus for bile, the BBC, joining the hacking tabloids in the doghouse. Spiking the Savile story strikes me as a worse blunder than taking the word of an abuse victim (and not naming anyone while doing so), but it’s all a massive step up the scandal ladder from calling the Blue Peter cat Socks instead of Cookie.
Bankers and their (de)regulators could also hardly be less well-regarded. Break the system, get bailed out, then invest in the election of a Tory government to ensure the pain is diverted onto the innocent: this has not proved popular. More widely, the expectation is now that the bigger a business you are, the more you fiddle your taxes to pay nothing. I won a $25 gift token at Starbucks because I believed Nate Silver: it’s the only way to get a hot drink off them without feeling complicit.
In short, the people who make important national decisions about our lives have demonstrated themselves collectively unfit. It seems unlikely that any amount of inquiries or token resignations can fix that. What caused it? A national culture of selfish individualism, materialism and impunity perhaps?
Could this possibly be a clearout point, a nadir from which things can recover? Watching a clip of Savile groping a girl live on Top of the Pops, my only consolation is that surely that couldn’t happen again nowadays. Will we get a cleaner politics if the next Denis Macshane knows he’ll be caught? Better financial regulation now the price from last time is so obvious? It’s not clear. Those feel like potentially false hopes, the triumph of optimism over experience.
I normally have a glib solution for everything, but today I just have alienation and anger. “Smash the state” is a slogan I also always rejected, because of the value I see in under-loved and under-appreciated parts of the state – social work, refuse collection, education as well as the democratic principle – but the list of parts of it that could use a bit of smashing grows longer by the day.
#1 by Topher Dawson on November 11, 2012 - 5:47 pm
[Redacted] Lots of cover-ups and no convictions for the systematic North Wales care home abuse. [Redacted] I am getting the sick feeling that establishment figures are once again getting away with appalling crimes, and damaging the BBC at the same time.
This may turn out to be my first post which is moderated. [Correct: Eds]
#2 by wangi on November 11, 2012 - 6:09 pm
“Smash the state” eh? You could get sponsorship from Trump for that!
#3 by Duncan on November 11, 2012 - 7:23 pm
I think it’s a really positive thing, ‘ordinary people’ in the west armed with sophisticated communications and general freedom of speech and assembly, finally seeing the realities of previously unquestioned institutions and social groups. It’s how new and better societies start. I genuinely think it’s the beginning of the end for the state as we’ve previously known it – and if handled peacefully and democratically it can be a liberating thing for everyone everywhere.
#4 by Indy on November 11, 2012 - 8:36 pm
I have found this whole thing quite weird and am starting to wonder if the world has gone slightly mad. Because I do agree with David Cameron that it’s become a bit of a witch-hunt. And I also have every sympathy for anyone who has been wrongly accused of child abuse and think they have a perfect right to sue the hell out of anyone who has accused them of that on no evidence except someone saying “I reckon it was him” on twitter. I think the person in question is a very shady character in terms of his record on employment but that does not mean it’s OK to call him a child abuser if, in fact, he is not!
None of which means that I think there hasn’t been an establishment cover-up in Wales or that there aren’t incredibly serious questions not only for the BBC but for the NHS and other institutions to answer about how Savile was apparently allowed to behave as he did.
But no. I do not think the hysteria that is going about twitter now would in any way be an improvement. It’s a lynch mob mentality frankly. The police and other agencies involved here have a chance to redeem themselves by conducting a painstaking and forensic investigation of what happened. when it happened, who was involved and who was culpable. That could take many months. It could take years. But the victims deserve nothing less. They certainly deserve much more than to be used as a battering ram to smash the state.
I also think we should remember that we have been through something similar to this already in Scotland with the investigation into historic abuse in children’s homes. I have found it suprising that none of the press have referenced this, maybe it just went under their radar at the time. But the approach taken there was correct. It is not simply about individuals, it’s about the systemic failures which allowed them to gain access to their victims. No systemic changes can be foolproof. Abusers are like rats, they can squeeze through the tightest spaces, but as well as gaining justice for the victims the priority also must be ensuring that the systemic failures whether in the BBC or in children’s homes or elsewhere are put right.
#5 by Doug Daniel on November 12, 2012 - 10:56 am
“something similar to this already in Scotland with the investigation into historic abuse in children’s homes. I have found it suprising that none of the press have referenced this, maybe it just went under their radar at the time.”
Let’s be perfectly honest, the only reason the issue is getting a lot of publicity at the moment in the press is a) it involves famous people and b) it is a big stick with which to hit the BBC.
Rest assured, if the Scottish investigation had unearthed a Scottish celebrity connected with the BBC who had been given unbridled access to care homes allowing him to abuse children, the press would be all over it.
And having provided that stick, we can see from the Mail on Sunday and David Mellor on Sunday Politics that we’re back to calling victims of child abuse “a weirdo”, as if it’s possible to lead a completely normal life after years of being passed around a group of child abusers.
“Hey, thanks for speaking up about the years of abuse you’ve suffered folks, but you’ve done your job now, so off you trot.”
And now we have people being arrested for posting something immature and stupid on Facebook. Ahhh, didn’t take us long to fall from that perch from which we tut-tutted at Russia for jailing people for exercising free speech, did it?
I’d like to think that all this is somehow a hangover from the power-obsessed ways of the British Empire and that we can start afresh after 2014, creating a country that doesn’t do these stupid things. Who knows, maybe we can, although even Scots are only human and it’s difficult to unlearn behaviours…
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