Friday, September 28, 2012

Trust

I supposed most everybody has bemoaned what the people who have authority over them, or who have the power to affect them, do to them, and so I'm probably not that much different from everyone else. But since memory is deliberately kept short these days by the current set of governors by the simply act of not referring to history, let me recall one or two things that the great and good have done in recent years.
A large number of our Members of Parliament demonstrated that they were able to commit fraud and that most were able to get away without the CPS giving them a call. (Fraud? Too harsh? Look up the dictionary definition.)
Our journalists, their  editors, and the publishers who lent on both, have showed they will do anything for a story that they think we might be interested in.
The police still shove people around and deprive them not only of their rights to protest by kettling them, but also, it seems, their lives. (Mind you, I know who I've got my money on when it comes to whether the noun pleb was used or not.)
The banks turned themselves into casinos where they held all the chips. (And when they dropped them, it was us who had to pick them up.)
Which brings me on to the report about LIBOR and the idiot I just saw on television speculating what the world might degenerate into if we start retroactively prosecuting the bankers responsible. Where will it end, she said? Well, where do I start unleashing my fury that you're even daring to try another type of manipulation with some obnoxious PR? Well, firstly, apart for making threats (which presupposes a future criminal action), I'd argue that all punishment for crime is retrospective. (See The Minority Report for what happens when you dabble with future crime.) And secondly, it's no excuse to claim that it wasn't spelled out specifically as the report says it should be from now on. Once again, look up the *expletive deleted* dictionary definition of fraud if you find yourself disagreeing. A crime is a crime is a crime. Will I escape prosecution if I devise a new way to kill some of the *expletive deleted* bankers just because the method hasn't been spelled out in law?   
Those who are in power are doing everything within their power to remain there at the expense of trust and misbegotten belief that we will all forget.
NIck Clegg? Here's a thought for you, sir ...
Don't do stupid – it's not clever.

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