all ifs, no busts

In his examination of the recent unpleasantness re the Serious Fraud Office and Saudi Arabia, Martin Kettle finds much to criticize in the response of the public. Quelle fucking surprise.

Everybody's ordinary life is littered with compromises, inconsistent behaviour and morally questionable decisions. It's far easier to say what you are against than what you are for. Yet we beat up on politicians as though expecting them to inhabit a different moral universe. It's a pathetic and very British habit. It is worth stopping to ask why we are so unrealistic and so wrong. The real wonder is that politicians manage to remain as honest and sensible as most of them do. It all says at least as much about us as it does about them.

No, you crawling twat; we beat them up because we expect them to inhabit the same moral universe as the rest of us; the one where allegations of fraud are not excused on the grounds of political inconvenience. Or “no ifs, no buts” is just for the little people, right? That and the other 3000 ways in which the government have thought it appropriate to improve our collective behaviour by means of legislation.

What makes Kettle’s pusillanimity even more galling is that any charges would likely have been brought under legislation that the government introduced itself in 2002. They’re not just given a pass on obeying rules against fraud everyone else is subject to, they’re not liable to full investigation under laws they make themselves.

Comments

[dsquared]

I have to say I found it difficult to join the smug consensus about Enron. A situation had grown up in which Ken Lay was faced with the choice between accouting honestly for his off-balance sheet vehicles, and not making a lot of money. Now perhaps you might say that it was dishonest to fiddle the books, but surely you can at least recognise the moral seriousness of the question of the quarterly earnings numbers and see that there are issues on both sides. After all, he inhabits the same moral universe as the rest of us.

[ejh]

I just noticed Kettle's use of the American "beat up on". How curious.

[Phil]

Also used by Paddy Ashdown 'tother night on the news.

[Chris Williams]

Every time I think that Kettle can't get his tongue any further up Blair's arse, he does. Truly a remarkable man.