Bishop Hill Crime, and punishment?
Aug 5, 2012 Bureaucrats Nick Cohen reviews a recent series of scandals in the literary world, and contrasts the different results in the UK and the USA.
The editor of the New York Times fired Jayson Blair in 2003 for inventing stories and stealing the work of others. No other publisher would touch him and he is now something called a "life coach" in Virginia. The New Republic fired Stephen Glass in 1998 for making up stories for its venerable pages. He left journalism to study the law. Alas, the New York State Bar deemed him "morally unfit" to practise even as a lawyer – a barb that must have stung – and he ended up performing with a Los Angeles comedy troupe.
Few British frauds worry that exposure will damage them because punishment rarely follows the crime. So brazen have they become that Stephen Leather, who churns outs ebook and paperback thrillers, boasted at last month's Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival: "As soon as my book is out I'm on Facebook and Twitter several times a day talking about it. I'll go on to several forums, the well-known forums, and post there under my name and under various other names and various other characters. You build up this whole network of characters who talk about your books and sometimes have conversations with yourself."
Cohen goes on to recount further examples of the UK's apparent willingness to overlook misdeeds by its leading literary figures - Birkbeck University's failure to deal with rogue academic Orlando Figes and the refusal of Independent editor Andreas Whittam-Smith to deal with Johann Hari until reader pressure forced his hand.
The refusal of British organisations to deal with wrongdoing does indeed seem endemic, although I think Cohen's emphasis on a transatlantic divide is misplaced. I'm sure readers here can think of examples of, for example, US academics who have remained in post despite overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing.
Cohen reckons there is some link between high finance and a refusal to deal with malefactors:
Suggestively, Whittam Smith and [current Independent editor] Blackhurst worked as City journalists before they became editors. In publishing as in finance, professionals have the same aversion to punishing fellow members of the middle class.
This is frankly rather bizarre, particularly given that Cohen has cited several instances from the literary and academic worlds that have no connection to finance whatsoever. I think the truth is more that organisational leaders will make a simple calculation of what is in their own interests and act accordingly. Birkbeck, for example, will have realised that no matter what Figes' misdeeds, the scandal would eventually blow over. There was therefore no need to act. Whittam-Smith at the Independent, however, may well have assumed that he had more to lose by throwing Hari overboard than by standing beside him. Only the furious reactions of his readers persuaded him otherwise.
In the commercial world, the consumer is indeed king.
Reader Comments (43)
I agree with the Bish's observation that there is a seeming inability of the Guardian types to understand that giving the consumer the power to withdraw their patronage is the ultimate democracy - though I think they do know this at some level and will try and distract away from that concept whenever possible since they are actually really scared of that.
Hence their attempt to hasten the change of identity of the Guardian from an actual tangible print item that can be tracked as a purchase (and is dying quickly) to one that is only online. Then they can manufacture advertising income from all kinds of tricks claiming exposure through sympathetic BBC and Government coverage ;)
However in an incredibly roundabout way I think Cohen's whole article is an attempt to shame the Independent into releasing Whittam-Strobes report on the Hari investigation. Now I found Hari as egregious as most other people at the time of his fall, especially with his creation of an Oxbridge climate scientist sockpuppet character that he could call upon to back him up whenever needed, but the one thing I remember at the time is Hari's attacks on Cohen using sockpuppets also, so there is obviously a personal side to this story here that Cohen hasn't let on about in this article.
So when he hints about the priviledge of the middle classes I find it ironic he is here using his middle class jounalistic tools to construct this article for his own use.
It's not a class thing. It's about professionalism. First it was lawyers, then surveyors and journalists, now scientists. It comes from abuse of Power by people on top who protect those lower down and harm the careers of the honest.
The fightback is hard. A decade ago, the Law Society lost its power of self-discipline. In the US the licensing system offers sanctions for engineers and scientists. Here it's the professional bodes. If I had my way I'd take self-discipline from the surveyors!
For UK university scientists, discipline is at Regent/VC level. The problem with CRU is that UEA is the centre of left wing EU indoctrination so CRU people were protected. The Murdoch connection came from NewsCorp's environmental interests, also the carbon traders who started at Lehman.
What we have here is the first ever collaboration between Marxism and Mafia using science to further political and commercial propaganda. The solution is to publicise how IPCC science became fraud.
Re: Aug 5, 2012 at 10:10 AM | The Leopard In The Basement
"Now I found Hari as egregious as most other people at the time of his fall, especially with his creation of an Oxbridge climate scientist sockpuppet character that he could call upon to back him up whenever needed, but the one thing I remember at the time is Hari's attacks on Cohen using sockpuppets also, so there is obviously a personal side to this story here that Cohen hasn't let on about in this article."
Sorry TLITB but Cohen DID actually mention this in his article in this passage -
"Hari appears to be the exception because pressure from readers forced him to resign. Yet it was symptomatic of the state of British letters that the Independent fought to keep him, despite the fraudulence of his journalism and the anonymous lies he placed on Wikipedia about his enemies – among whose number I was one, I am proud to say. Andreas Whittam Smith, an editor I once admired, conducted an investigation but did not call witnesses or demand Hari's resignation."
So I hope you revise your opinion of him and agree that such articles are welcome in exposing the truth no matter what the motives you choose to attribute.
Link for the above -
""Hari appears to be the exception because pressure from readers forced him to resign. Yet it was symptomatic of the state of British letters that the Independent fought to keep him, despite the fraudulence of his journalism and the anonymous lies he placed on Wikipedia about his enemies – among whose number I was one, I am proud to say. Andreas Whittam Smith, an editor I once admired, conducted an investigation but did not call witnesses or demand Hari's resignation."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/05/nick-cohen-cheating-authors-journalists
In the commercial world, the consumer is indeed king.
Indeed. So much so that we have to have laws to protect the rights of these 'kings' from rapacious vendors.
Aug 5, 2012 at 11:32 AM | Marion
Yes I missed that reference in my hasty reading. Cohen had indeed *let on* about his personal involvement with Hari. I had chosen to think Cohen is making a nice little earner picking up on the Jonah Lehrer story and leveraging it back to pressure Whittam-Smith for the report on Hari, which is a nice little thing to do if you have a slot on a broadsheet to do it.
I don't really have an opinion *of* Cohen so I can't revise that. I don't revise my opinion of what he is *doing* ;)
However no matter how obliquely offered I guess I welcome anything that adds information on the charlatans in the press, even if it only comes about by picking through the tea-leaves of the bitching between journos.
Shame nobody is offered for welcome who are just writing to actually inform people for the sake of just informing people though ;)
To his credit, Tom Chivers wrote a principled and withering condemnation of Hari, despite admitting that he empathised entirely with his ideological views.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100105678/we-lefties-shouldnt-be-so-quick-to-forgive-johann-hari/
Re: Aug 5, 2012 at 11:46 AM | sHx
" "In the commercial world, the consumer is indeed king."
Indeed. So much so that we have to have laws to protect the rights of these 'kings' from rapacious vendors. "
And funny how those laws 'protecting' the consumer have a habit of doing the reverse!
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/features/another-view-of-consumerism/
Re: Aug 5, 2012 at 12:10 PM | Pharos
"To his credit, Tom Chivers wrote a principled and withering condemnation of Hari, despite admitting that he empathised entirely with his ideological views."
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100105678/we-lefties-shouldnt-be-so-quick-to-forgive-johann-hari/
Thanks for the link Pharos , I have just revised my opinion of Chivers (marginally) upwards.
A shame he doesn't seem to be aware of the Team type "sockpuppetry" in William Connelley's adjustments of Wikipedia -
(Link to the actual article appears to be cut, but this gives the flavour -)
http://planet.infowars.com/health/un-greenpeace-and-wikipedia-how-wikipedias-green-doctor-rewrote-5428-climate-articles-and-why
Re: Aug 5, 2012 at 12:29 PM | Marion
On second thoughts that may be a little unfair on Connelley - he did at least give his real identity - but I'm not sure how many were aware then of his membership of the 'Real Climate' team.
Long before these incidents, compare the British failure to punish the Cambridge spies with US and Canada.
Nothing happened to Anthony Blunt for 13 years or so after he was identified as a spy. Only after he was publicly outed was any action taken.
Or the famous Kim Philby. He was not punished when identified as a spy. He was only outed publicly as a result of American vetting of Michael Straight in the early 1960s (Straight had known Philby at Cambridge).
That Philby had represented UK in the interrogation of Gouzenko in 1946 wasn't known until 2003 document releases from the Russians.
I do not think there is any point in discussing particular fields or organisations because the problem exists throughout the population in all fields in the UK.
I think a majority of people take a view that it is actually a correct decision to benefit yourself (even if doing wrong or breaking the law) if you can get away with it, this is considered the smart thing to do and is to be admired.
Sometimes I wonder if it depends which side of the right/left political divide they're considered to be on?
For example Conservative Tesco heiress, Dame Shirley Porter's gerrymandering in Westminser was severely punished
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/3867387.stm
Yet New Labour faced no penalties for doing basically the same but on a much greater scale -
http://wikibin.org/articles/labour-party-immigration-scandal.html
Dung
It is not just a UK problem, Western society continues to swallow moral relativism. Steve McIntyre is right to point out the support–overt and covert– for Communism amongst the privileged British postwar intelligentsia. The inherent evil of Communism has never properly been acknowledged; it remains somehow less reprehensible, more excusable, than Nazism.
This gives the Left an escape route for their wrong-doing: their ideology, even at the extreme, is in pursuit of a 'cause' that might occasionally be wrong-headed but is not evil. The 'opposite' (actually, very similar) ideology has successfully been painted as totally beyond the pale.
The facts tell a different picture. But the 'progressives' (a term that goes back to the very beginnings of Communism) are in control of most institutions. They will tend to ignore (or excuse) transgressions from 'their kind of people'.
"The truth for the Left", as someone said in a blog post a while back, "is whatever they want it to be".
The Hari affair simply demonstrated that the MSM are as much as problem as the government. That anyone could even defend Hari's behaviour is beyond me. It speaks of complete moral compromise.
I do not believe it has anything to do with right or left, Nazism or Communism, it is all about individuals. For a country like Russia, I dont think Communism was such a bad idea, the idea was corrupted by its leaders because they were in a position of having absolute power.
Nazism went so badly wrong because Hitler was given absolute power.
Whatever wonderful, fair and democratic system man can devise (so far), power hungry individuals can twist to their own ends because the population does not take responsibility.
The UK was a democracy until Heath took us into the EU (Common Market as was). He knew exactly where it would lead but he lied to us, I still do not understand why.
Now the three major parties collude in keeping us in the EU and again I do not understand why. All the parties understand that the British people are no longer happy in the EU but they do not care and so we no longer have a democracy.
I vote UKIP and am a card carrying member. UKIP is the only honest party in the UK because it has as its main policy something that all the pundits said would never win an election (lets forget whether it is right or wrong, that does not matter of course).
Another blatant example of the right/left difference in treatment is that of Michael Trend Conservative MP and Jacqui Smith Labour Minister,
Michael Trend claimed that the spare room in his friend's house in Windsor was his 'main home' and claimed expenses for his real home. He was rightfully ordered to repay the £90k he had wrongfully claimed, standing down at the next election.
http://order-order.com/2009/02/10/michael-trend-precednt-is-worrying-for/
Jacqui Smith claimed that her sister's spare bedroom was her main home yet failed to be required to repay the £116k she had claimed on expenses for her real main home.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1219774/Jacqui-Smith-escapes-punishment-116-000-second-home-expense-claims.html
Oh the irony when during much of the latter part of New Labour's time in power television viewers in the UK were subjected to adverts warning of the prosecution and imprisonment of benefits claimants found to be fraudulent.
Re: Aug 5, 2012 at 2:46 PM | Dung
Dung it seemed at one time that right wing parties stood for Small Government and left wing parties for BIG Government, (although definitions have become muddied) though it now appears simply that all three main parties support BIG Government. Let's hope that UKIP can make some impact though that will be difficult with the BBC propaganda against it.
Though as far as the Nazi (National Socialist) Party was concerned they were far more 'socialist' ie Big Govt. than not.
Dung, Communism was opposed in Soviet Russia and so was Nazism in Germany. How do you say they were not so bad for their respective countries? Communism was a fad born of late Romanticism, subsequently believed itself to be utterly scientific and superior, and therefore weakened forces of self-examination and strengthened tyranny (the opposite of what 'it' intended). It is dangerous in the extreme. Why would it be suitable for Russia, or any people?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/aug/05/overseas-territories-wildlife-threatened
Smug Sanctimonious Enviromentalists theres no more money left for wildlife preservation its all been wasted on useless ugly windmills.
Ha Ha not.
Try getting your priorities right before you start preaching at the rest of us.Its our planet too Monbiot.
(And they chop more birds up then Bernard Mathews)
The Nazis weren't right wing. They were the National Socialists. Socialists are lefties.
The Truth is what the Public says it is! And the USSofA ain't far behind the USSofK, in fact with the coaches we have in the WH and Congress these days, the Brits will be eating our dust in a skinny minute or two. A thought: There once was an Age of Reason that was followed by an Age of Treason and the Lord God above told the Winds and the Waves to "Flush the toilet again! And again! And again!".
Nothing like a spot of tead and crumpets to salve the pangs
Dung, Communism was opposed in Soviet Russia and so was Nazism in Germany. How do you say they were not so bad for their respective countries? Communism was a fad born of late Romanticism, subsequently believed itself to be scientific and superior, and therefore weakened forces of self-examination and strengthened tyranny (the opposite of what 'it' intended). Why would it be suitable for Russia, or any people? In romanticism, commoners were seen to be subjected to cruelty and arbitrariness borne of a witless and disconnected aristocracy who possessed no special merit. Under communism and socialism, 'science' and 'rationality' could serve as the basis for authority, rather than individual-driven politics of empire and the feudal lord. Many of the ills of the modern-day state, communist or otherwise, are derived directly from this mode of thinking.
Most of the well-established professions go through bad patches. They either put their own house in order or become supplanted by something better. Certainly, traditional journalism has been going through a very bad patch for a decade or so, simply because they forgot the basics and were told to go for circulation numbers.
That's a short term thing but in the long term, it's lethal. Young, educated people are simply not reading the product.
Compounding that mistake and threatening to take advantage of it, is the internet. Publishing the same monolithic viewpoint as a web page, rather than printing it, doesn't make it any more interesting or acceptable to tomorrow's readers.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/the-death-of-journalism-and-the-irresistible-rise-of-the-blogosphere/
Pointman
I think rather than "crime and punishment" the UK could do with a healthy dose of accountability across the board.
It strikes me that most UK public bodies and major corporates are near terminally constipated with status drunk, process obsessed under achievers - who seek the easiest path to absorb more process be that "climate change", increased regulation - or simply they seek to enforce their agenda for what you "should be thinking about" © G,Broon Esq. - regardless of *any* evidence.
In the case of most of the media - it's an addiction to copy n pasting stuff that's been designed to ooze through their editorial guidelines with minimal inspection to last the few seconds of the Marketing Dept. identified individual attention span....
The "A" word is utterly taboo in modern Britain. Whatever trust there was has been broken - be it Police, BBC, Civil Servants, Political Parties, Utilities, The Judiciary etc., etc... - the greed, self absorption, blinkered arrogance and pushiness of these people is likely to end rather badly. It's not about the politics - it's about standards of behavior and the UK's in trouble, no doubt about it.
"The Nazis weren't right wing. They were the National Socialists. Socialists are lefties." --Peter Dunford
If anyone doubts this, let them read the manifesto of the National Socialistische Deutsches Arbeiter Partei:
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSDAP_25_points_manifesto
I've seen this canard repeated a lot of late, that the Nazis were right wingers of some stripe or other. They were indeed lefties (National Socialists). The only way they could appear to be right wing is to someone to their left, i.e., communists. Keep that in mind when some progressive claims Nazis were right wing.
Johann Hari fans everywhere will take heart (or some other organ) to learn he has a column in the Huffington Post. Their credibility was already zero, so no loss, one way or the other. Avians of a plume and all that.
Shub
You are talking about the reality of Soviet Communism and I was talking about the idea. As others have said it was almost a romanticism but it was a well meaning idea destroyed by its practitioners. I bow to those who think Fascists are left wing but it really does not matter just as today it does not matter how our UK parties describe themselves.
What seems to most occupy the thoughts of our political parties is how to get elected at the next election, they study what the population want to hear them say and they say it. However they feel under no obligation to carry out those choices once elected and our electorate votes them in again anyway doh!
Dung
Your views on Communism seem to have come straight from the mid-20th Century Apologists' Handbook. It should by now be clear and incontestable that Communism IS totalitarian power. Communism can only exist because it controls everything: control of the economy, control of knowledge, control of movement and opinion and people.
The moment any of these controls is lost, the whole edifice of state socialism falls apart. As Gorbachev–a 'reform communist'–found to his genuine surprise.
He might have looked slightly naive in 1986 but this is 2012, Dung, and we should be able to learn from history. Even those who were blinkered to reality at the time.
Gixxer
I do not approve of Communism, have never been tempted by any left wing philosophy and never will. However Communism "as an idea" came from idealists, they meant well but did not understand that in the real world it stood no chance of working.
The Labour party in the UK is still an idealistic party only bettered by the Liberals. They both want to right wrongs, help the less well off, the sick, displaced citizens from anywhere and everywhere and the government will pay for all of it.
They just never understood where the money comes from let alone how stupid their policies were.
Dung
Fair enough. Though I would contend that the Labour and Liberal parties are rather less full of wrong-righting idealists than you imply. Especially in the upper echelons, both parties appear to have their share of careerist politicians focused more on their own opportunities than creating those for the disadvantaged.
As a conservative, I want to 'do good' myself. I do not want to see people disadvantaged, sick or dying because we fail to care for them.. I firmly believe in the need for certain social 'safety nets' and the value of an inclusive, caring society. I certainly do not accept that the soft-Left has a monopoly on these things or even that they care more about them. My observation of the Left is that because they see themselves as having a noble 'Cause' (and, for most of the period after Marx, a powerful ideology) they are generally more cruel, cynical and oppressive. Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to be a pragmatic, less ideological bunch. Of course, some of the dynamos of conservative thinking and action were more ideologically driven - Mrs T, for example - but that would be the exception rather than the rule.
I think the ability of the Establishment to protect its own, in the UK, has been seen most clearly in the area of financial crime.
Although wealthy, well-connected and powerful people everywhere can use their power to protect themselves from the consequence of their misbehaviour - the fragmentation of power in the US, by constitutional, legal & geographical divisions eventually succeeds in bringing the powerful to account.
The incestuous concentration of power bequeathed by the British class system, in family, educational and professional traditions (on the political left as well as the right), runs through all our institutions and is much more difficult to root out.
That's why you sometimes see scions of major US financial institutions doing the "perp walk" from their Wall St offices in shackles - but never the equivalent here (unless the miscreants come from an "outsider" social or cultural group).
If you come into conflict (as an individual rather than a legally represented institution) in the UK with a member of an established profession like law, accountancy, surveying or medicine you will find that getting support for legal action is possible - but is an extremely difficult, fraught and tortuous process.
If you want to find a lawyer to sue another lawyer (for example) in the US - you just need to pick up the nearest phone.
Curiously Margaret Thatcher was the only senior UK politician of any political stripe who realised the importance of opening up professional and institutional concentrations of power in areas like law and The City.
After she went, her Labour successors seemed more interested on hopping on professional gravy trains rather than derailing them.
Dung. I spent two months in the old USSR in the Summer of 1968. Communism was not good for the people of those benighted states in any sense at all. No way.
Derek Bentley said "let him have it" and was hanged for murder.
Cressida Dick said much the same thing and was given a medal.
Gixxer
The Tory party is no longer pragmatic plus it has joined the left wing parties in their love of big government. Cameron is a Blaire clone, slick talker, willing to promise anything needed to get elected and equally willing to ditch those promises at the drop of a hat. None of the three main parties is electable, what we need is for the electorate to realise that and break the mould, ho hum....
Gixxerboy
Sounds like good Conservative principles to me!But even Mrs Thatcher was a realist.
I keep coming back to her take on the Good Samaritan. All his charitable intentions would have come to naught if he hadn't had enough money to pay the innkeeper (and by implication any others involved in looking after the victim).
We have corrupted the words of St Paul with the glib "money is the root of all evil" whereas the actual words were "love of money is the root of all evil". Quite a different thing altogether.
It's also worth remembering the carefully selected quote which the Daily Mirror used to vilify Mrs Thatcher. Perhaps we would do well to remember the context of that particualr quote:
The trouble is, as Dung points out, the Tories have ceased to be pragmatists. And since pragmatism has been the Tories' ideology (so to speak), they have ceased to be Tories. They caught a bad cold from New Labour at a time when the pseudo-Left was in the ascendancy. Phrases like "decontaminating the brand", "learning lessons" made me cringe. A severe defeat in 1997 had them running round like headless chickens without anyone stopping to draw breath and realise that the main reason for the defeat was that they'd been in power for 18 years and the public were sick of them, not that the policies were wrong — as all the opinion polls of the last eight years at least showed. It was the people that needed to be decontaminated, not the brand.
(Learning how to combat Campbell would have a big difference as well!)
To get back on topic and link my other posts; carbon taxation is BIG GOVERNMENT. Our government (and all three major parties would agree) is taxing us and removing freedoms in order to "save the planet". This is despite the fact that much of the world is sensibly not following our lead and that even if the whole EU followed this path it would still make no difference.
Since basic common sense is informing government that they are barking up the wrong tree (they seem to be just plain barking) but still they continue. How can one explain this lemming like behaviour?
How is it that instead of going all out for shale, the government is behaving like someone with obsessive compulsive disorder; running round and round a car checking and re checking that the doors are locked.
We cant go for gas because there isnt enough of it.
We cant go for gas until we know it is safe.
OK the USA is having no problems, we need to check for ourselves to be sure.
OK one enquiry said it was OK but lets have another one to make sure.
OK a second enquiry said it was safe but we need to know how much gas there is to be sure.
Before we give the go ahead, we need interested parties to answer these questions:
Why do estimates of our reserves keep changing? (give me strength!).
How much gas have we got and NO you cant drill to find out.
What are the prospects for offshore shale gas in the UK Continental Shelf?
So nobody knows all the answers, we better leave it all in the ground, its the only way to be sure.
I say we nuke Westminster fromn orbit, THATS the only way to be sure ^.^
ups! Wrong topic, my bad.
Steve McIntyre: "Long before these incidents, compare the British failure to punish the Cambridge spies with US and Canada."
Sorry that this is a bit OT, but it's no more so than the post on which I am commenting. I can't let the above comment go. The US had cast-iron proof that Alger Hiss was a Soviet agent, but only ever prosecuted him for perjury. Likewise, no attempt was made to prosecute the Canadian Lachlan Currie, or Harry Dexter White, or to make public the evidence against them, even after White died of a heart attack. Even now, we are told that the secrecy surrounding Venona was solely about security, but it's rather hard to avoid the feeling that it conveniently enabled Washington to keep some very high-profile skeletons locked away in the closet.
Dung, Mike Jackson
I agree with you both. My point is that Communism/State Socialism should be a completely Dead Letter in terms of ideology and practical politics. It was one of the most terrible experiments inflicted on the human race - perhaps the most terrible. The results were unequivocal: it can only be sustained by murderous repression and a climate of fear, and in material terms it is a complete failure. The actual list of negative effects is too long to write.
All of Leftist thinking is therefore tainted, and even the 'Social Democrats' should be held accountable as apologists and pedlars of a 'softened' version of this awful, failed ideology. Unfortunately, they are not. We have lost all perspective. Why on earth is it still acceptable to display a hammer and sickle or images of Communist heroes (Che, Mao, even Stalin) when hysteria erupts over a Swastika or Hitler?
The relevance of this to the post? The 'Establishment' in Britain has been successfully taken over by the Left. Beginning post-war with Cambridge Communists; progressing through the 'sixties with deliberate radicalisation of the Universities during their period of expansion; the cohort they taught getting into positions of power in the media, the Law and even science - 'their people' steadily took over the levers of power. After a few setbacks in the Thatcher years, Blair's ascendancy opened the floodgates and old-style conservatism was despatched to the knacker's yard.
So now you have a Britain (and the other Anglo-Saxon democracies are not much different) where the Left largely controls the Establishment. And because they still see in themselves the 'noble revolutionary' of their formative, Vietnam-protesting, man-the-barricades years, they readily reject old-fashioned notions like integrity, impartiality, truth, honesty, rigour, duty, honour or anything else which might impede the progress of their cause. Meanwhile clothing themselves in the 'respectability' of their immediate, conservative forebears. Means and ends, old boy, omlettes and eggs.
So when, in the upper echelons of the literary, academic, scientific or even legal worlds, a senior figure does obvious wrong, they will not be adequately punished. The high standards we might expect of such disciplines are nowadays all too readily ignored. When you're from the Left, doing the 'right' thing is just old-fashioned, reactionary and bourgeois, man.
Seeking equivalence between these fields and money-market traders seems odd. We should surely expect a little swashbuckling capitalism and running close to the regulatory wind from City boys. They're in it for the money and the thrill, not to advance scientific endeavour, uphold the law or convey high knowledge down the generations. It is surely only right that we expect different standards of differing professions. But in a typically modern arse/face interchange, it's open season on errant bankers while the heads of scientific establishments can lie, cheat, fail, deceive and put back scientific understanding 50 years with impunity.
Gixxer
On politics:
Agree totally, thats why I am backing UKIP :), UKIP is the only party that "has a chance" to change things once and for all.
Ukip does not have experienced politicians, that gives it a gold star in my book. We really do need to break the mould and start over.
On bankers I think you have to remember whose money it is that they are gambling with and so I would be very hard on bankers. They are taking home money in large suitcases, gained at the expense of ordinary tax payers everywhere.
Dung
I'm with you pretty much all the way. All I'd add is that the luggage of those on the Climate Change Gravy Train is the same. ;-)