Upper-Class Tory twits & mindless idiots‏

I told you long ago not to talk or listen to politicians, bankers, economists or policy wonks. Instead, you should have been donating, very generously, directly to the money-men of the Conservative Party. It might have been an expensive "kitchen supper' as snacks go but by now you might have zero corporation tax, zero capital gains tax and a top personal income-tax bracket of 15p. All for a backhander of around 750k to the Tory Party. They might even privatise the police forces and toss in a knighthood for the round million. Follow the example of property developers that have bunged enough money at the Tory Party to get the whole of Britain turned into a free-for-all building site. Expect to see several property developers in the next Queen's Birthday Honours List.

To those of us with exposure to the American way of doing politics this comes as no great surprise - nor should it come as much of a shock to the citizens of the UK. Politics is about vested interests and the most vested of these is money and it's derivatives - wealth and power.  The man seen on hidden-camera offering to subvert democracy for large quantities of wedge got there because he threw enough folding money - (in his vernacular; a 'bar" and a couple of "plums")  - at the Tory Party to get the job as it's Treasurer. He made his money in Thatcher's Big-Bang City and he brought it's morality with him. That the Labour party did something very similar is no defence. Selling peerages and getting a "Bernie" from Bernie Ecclestone for political favours is part and parcel of what now passes for democratic politics in the age of unregulated capitalism. Didn't Marx and Engels say something about this? Instead of concentrating all power in the State all power is concentrated in private corporations. Either way democracy isn't involved.

The Irish have just added more proof, if any were needed, to the assertion that all power, in some manner or other, corrupts. Especially in an environment where the Treasurer of the Tory party refers to a billion quid as a "yard". Former Irish Prime-minister Ahern, where he to dwell in London instead of Dublin, could well have added the "Bertie" to the lexicon of money slang.

The recent litany of embarrassment for the UK government might be described as the Conservative Party Conundrum. The "New Labour" emulating "New Tory" modernisers of the Conservative Party are actually the former 19th century model (previously declared extinct) of wealth, class and privilege (requires a minimum of 300 years of inbreeding) now occupying the Parliamentary front benches while the Conservative Party and it's HQ remain firmly in the grip of the (mongrel) Thatcherites. Ne'er the twain shall meet. Cameron rose to power only because the Thatcherites went into hiding after egregious sleaze gave Thatcherism and it's adherents a bad name and made the Tories unelectable - New Labour then stole most of Thatcher's policies anyway. Cameron went out of his way not to speak to Thatcherites, to avoid contagion, in the hope of getting himself elected and he half succeeded. Thatcherites wouldn't have given him any good advice even if he asked for it. Now they're all regretting it.

This has resulted in a face-off between the resurgant Old Tory Entitlement and the Thatcher Meritocracy and they are both losing. The reappearance of Tory Class-Politics is exactly what Thatcherism was meant to prevent - unfortunately it was also meant to prevent exactly the present economic disaster from ever happening. So Thatcherites don't really have much of a clue as to how to solve it without admitting that it was their supporters that brought this disaster about or looking, god forbid, like the Labour party. The Tory Entitlement, represented by Cameron, Osborne and Maude, is doing what comes naturally to them -  concluding that what's good for them is, by definition, good for the country. By extension this means, in their minds at least, that the working classes are undeserving of the privileges dispensed by Public School and Oxbridge upbringings - and need to be treated as mindless idiots. The Lower Orders don't know what's good for them and, in any event, they don't matter. Meanwhile the system is tuned to provide the already privaleged with yet more privileges.

Unfortunately for the chinless upper-class Tory twits this sense of entitlement overlooks how they got put in power in the first place - by mindless idiots. No wonder they fought for so long to prevent universal suffrage. Not only has their socially-elevated personal view of what's right and proper upset the Sun newspaper reading Conservative working-class faithful but the Daily Telegraph, Times and Sunday Times reading middle-class Tory faithful to boot. They've managed to do this by surrounding themselves with doppelgangers - those whose senses of entitlement and self-worth greatly outweigh their abilities - but fit nicely into the Realm of Privilege they foolishly believe the country should revert to. They are so convicted of this notion that nothing - nothing other than electoral annihilation - will convince them that the return to a pre first world war Establishment isn't a good thing. This is benignly described as "being out of touch".

If they were simply "out of touch" it would be a good thing. They are also vastly and unknowingly incompetent. So that makes them oblivious to how vastly incompetently out of touch they actually are - as demonstrated by David Cameron showing his common-man, Cornish Pasty-munching, fuel-hoarding, pay-to-meet, credentials with a photo-op playing BADMINTON in the back garden of No.10! He probably did this on the advice of George Osborne - a man who probably thinks that Badminton is more popular than Soccer and is certainly more popular than Cornish Pasties - at least among the people he knows.

All of this brings us to the disconnect between Entitlement Politicians and the realities of power, money and the electorate. To the Entitlement money is vulgar and it is best to leave such unsavoury things to unsavoury people. By already having all the things others covet they believe they're much better than the people that elected them and so should, naturally, be looked-up to for leadership and guidance. We're better than you and have the plummy accent to prove it. Which begs the question - who are the real mindless idiots?

"Don't tell me - I don't want to know" school of management.

Your recent justification of the moral status quo ante begs the question as to how and why we're surrounded by illegality that is accepted as usual and that everyone involved claims to know nothing about it. What's worse is that they think we believe they knew nothing.

After the recent Gilbert & Sullivan theatre at the Palace of Westminster, leaving aside any examination of the veracity of the answers given to the questions at issue, the striking feature is that all these folk, to a man and woman, are guilty of mind-boggling, credulity-straining, if not criminal lack of knowledge of the goings on within the organisations they ran. It appears that Ignorance is so widespread that the only conclusion is that it isn't coincidental but that it is deliberate. What we witnessed was wall-to-wall denial based upon a claimed total lack of knowledge around a series of major events, occurring over a number of years, within their senior managerial remit. How does this happen? Enter the "Don't tell me - I don't want to know" school of management. While this school of management is widespread in it's influence and adherence it is of particular importance when it comes to the application of editorial standards in the media.

The fundamental tenet of the "don't tell me - I don't want to know" school of management is Deniability. This permits senior management to avoid the repercussions of actions taken by employees under their control by claiming that they didn't know what they were up to if that action were to later come back to bite them on the ass. While I haven't heard the "don't tell me - I don't want to know" refrain often I've heard it more than once. Let's take a simple example - the bribing of government officials. On occasion, in pursuit of a news story, it is necessary to get into a country that actively doesn't desire your presence. This leads to the need to by-pass the usual immigration and customs formalities by "inducing" the local government employees, officially tasked with keeping you out, to assist your entry into the country. Unfortunately once in a country in this manner the exercise must be repeated to get out of it. When filling in an expense report for this variety of assignment it is advisable to describe these payments as "Immigration Fee" or "Customs Clearance" rather than "Bribes". All News organisations have rules about bribing people and illegal behaviour but also recognise that exigent circumstances prevent strict adherence to them if the story justifies them. Management knows you can't pop-in unnoticed on a tourist visa with 20 boxes of camera equipment - but nobody asks "How'd you do it".  There'd be a lot of stories you'd never get if this wasn't the case. It is reasonably clear that "liberating" a motor vehicle, as is sometimes required in a war zone, to allow movement to and around the story won't influence the content of the story but simply enable it's coverage. After this it gets a bit more subtle. When does it become payment for the content of the story itself? 

What we see with the News Of The World/News International denial of any knowledge of wrongdoing is a good example of the "don't tell me - I don't want to know" school of management in practice where blindingly obvious illegal behaviour is ignored in pursuit of a news story. Usually this is on a case by case basis justified by "In the Public Interest" circumstances but what happens if this becomes enshrined in the ethos of the news company as a common means to get stories. It is a trickle-down phenomenon. If it is clear the boss doesn't want to, or legally can't, know what is actually going on so as to maintain deniability then you act out a charade where the boss knows that you know that he knows but can not actually be told. This rapidly becomes you telling the Boss "you don't want to know". If the Boss is happy about this then so are you and your need to know diminishes creating the tacit company wide belief that nobody important will do anything about it even if you told them - so its all OK. In such an environment illegality spreads and becomes standard operating practice - condoned by senior management's complicity in "Don't tell me  - I don't want to know".

There is of course the paper trail-blocking device of inserting an intermediary between the invoice presented to and approved by the manager and the final recipient of the payment - via a third party, usually a "stringer" - allowing the manager to deny that they paid for anything illegal. So the "I have never paid for illegally gained information" claim can be maintained by keeping payments at "arms length".

Now, while Journalism is presently on the receiving end of justifiable outrage, we need not look far afield for examples of similar illegal behaviour in a wide variety of Corporate and Financial activities where bribery and corruption are not unheard of. Again the "don't tell me - I don't want to know" school of management enables senior management to avoid guilt, job expulsion and possible criminal prosecution by claiming their total ignorance of any malfeasance while sacrificing a few implicated, but usually well compensated, staff in penance along with paying, without prejudice, a small fine. This even though it is common knowledge that bribery and corruption - in all its many guises - are the only way to achieve a satisfactory business outcome.

This culture has created an inchoate, trust free, seemingly all-pervading version of management that permits those in a position of ultimate accountability and responsibility to assume neither.