Thursday 3rd April

Growing up I was taught that in Britain we were honest; at least Gentlemen were, criminals were almost exclusively confined to the lower working classes, ruffians, villains and crooks abounded in the warrens and slums, especially of that wicked city London.  Watching Oliver Twist on TV only re-enforced this image.

I ran away to London, and have lived here ever since, and while there is crime here, it is no way confined to the working classes.   I discovered also that the streets were not paved with gold, but this has never stopped the capital being a magnet for those attempting to enrich themselves.  It may well be that there were crooks in high places back then, but it was either hushed up or not so prevalent, in short we didn’t hear much about it.  There were even political condemnations such as Edward Heath’s public criticism of Tiny Rowland (ancient history for many of you, no doubt).

Everything changed with Mrs. Thatcher and the coterie she surrounded herself with.  In 1984 the markets were liberated and that created an explosion of traders who saw rules as there to be broken, who had greed as their creed, whose sole motive was to make themselves rich.  And the regulators, despite almost constant reforms have been totally ineffective.  The schemes dreamed up are so complicated that even commercial lawyers have difficulty in deciding if they are actually legal or not. One thing is for sure, they are absolutely immoral.  Trading in food futures merely inflates the price for the poorest in the world, and in this dog eat dog world the nastier, the sharper, the greedier you are, the bigger the prize.

The newspapers delight in exposing benefit cheats, living in big houses with ten children at the state’s expense, but are largely silent about the shenanigans of company directors who have work done on their homes and bill it to the company and other misdemeanours.  I am not sure how to even begin to change things.  A change in the culture is needed, one where people matter more than money.  Sadly I cannot see that idea catching on soon.