When pondering the ethical contortions of the various inquiries into the Climatic Research Unit, I sometimes wonder whether there was ever any chance of anyone being found guilty of anything. As Doug Keenan has pointed out, there are tens of thousands of scientists in the UK and none has been found guilty of research fraud in the last twenty years. The idea that the scientific community here is populated entirely by choirs of seraphim and cherubim is, of course, not credible, so we are left to conclude that bad behaviour by scientists is, in the normal run of things, completely ignored. And it's not just the scientists, of course. It has been pointed out that only 18 teachers have been fired in England in the last 40 years.
In this vein, I note (H/T Raedwald) the story here that the head of the UK civil service is trying to organise a cover-up of civil servants' use of government credit cards to pay for personal expenditure, a technique that has been correctly characterised as "stealing".
Parliamentary officials -- sometimes dubbed "the men in tights" for their ceremonial garb -- used official credit cards on items ranging from luxury hotels to junk food.
Records show that last year, their other purchases included new shoes for £94, an £885 food mixer and £189 of French lessons.
With one of the London rioters being jailed for stealing a bottle of water, it's hard not to notice the contrast to misdeeds by the general public and misdeeds those on the government payroll.