As has been seen on documentaries recently, such as Dispatches and Panorama, our system is increasingly one that favours and rewards the unscrupulous.
Todd White’s painting “Unscrupulous” can be seen with his other word at Rennies Gallery
You may have wondered how we have got to where we are today. It seems to me as if the United Kingdom trots faithfully behind America as our government observe how the American people can be suppressed, controlled and disempowered so they stop fighting, protesting and speaking up against injustices appearing in all areas of their lives.
There is nothing to require or demand a proper response, so all that happens in dialogue between the public or voters and their elected representatives is empty rhetoric. For example, when challenged for his courtship of extra income through his wife’s company to advise on Brexit, as exposed on Dispatches “Politicians For Hire: Cashing in On Brexit, Andrew Lansley calls the impartial adjudicator from the House of Lords “wrong” without saying how or why and even brings up his cancer treatment before denying any dodgy doing without proving otherwise.
The system seems to favour the unscrupulous on every level. Panorama showed how people who had been donors to the Tory party were continuing in senior roles in property development organisations despite being declared bankrupt and being disallowed to hold such positions. The program even said how “the unscrupulous have become untouchable” and, surprise surprise, they were unreachable too because they spent money on lawyers and other subordinates to buffer the inconvenient press inquiries away.
I would like to see a “right of a reply” directive come in so at least people are made to be accountable for their actions as right now, passive aggressive, defensive, diffusive and dismissive non-communication tactics are readily used and taken as the last word as that is the last word that is given when these people are challenged.
Ironically, “honesty” has been hijacked by the establishment as a weapon against the honest majority. The Department for Work and Pensions has, for years now, spent public money on advertising a phone line for people to report their neighbours for suspected benefit fraud instead of training capable humans to detect the patterns of behaviour employed (often blatantly and arrogantly) by the minority of people who cheat the system.
It is almost as if a “safety in numbers” idea is applied, therefore if you think, say and do like the system designers do you will be alright. The Working Tax Credits system works completely on heresay and not on evidence of eligibility. If you say you earn less than £22,000 a year, worked at least 35 hours a week and stayed in the same job, they are going to give you money and will not check up on you until you call them up and say “I’ve just got through in my lunchbreak and only just had time to tell you…….” Gotcha! We’re having a year’s money back from you or we’re sending the bailiffs in. So genuine, honest, human behaviour lands you in the shit while trotting off the right information as laid out in the “Code of Practice” means free money. That has seemed to be the way all the way up through our establishment to MPs hiring themselves out to advise private companies on Brexit.
If unscrupulous people design a system or pass the laws, how are honest hardworking people supposed to navigate it? It is not designed for their thinking. There is a huge “Do as I say not as I do” culture that relies, like social media, on our distaste for unearned authority and being told what to do without good reason.
Without rigid rules that apply to everyone equally and a requirement for transparency and a reward for honesty, this system cannot run for the honest, hard working majority of the population.
Dairy of A Nonny Moose 