Dichotomy between all our institutional rules and how power behaves

 We’re very careful in our organisations these days. Due diligence and corporate governance, policies for correct behaviour in this and that, qualifications scrutinised, codes of conduct, background checks.

And yet …

Over in that London the talk is all of sleaze and how the current government is trying to escape scrutiny, and, basically do what it likes to the benefit of those it likes. In Bulgaria and Romania vaccination numbers are critically low because, basically, the population doesn’t trust governments with a history of corruption. These are only a few examples.

 

Here in Ireland, the land of saints and scholars, we never have these problems! Although a decade of tribunalsinto planning backhanders, dodgy meat sales, contaminated blood and other issues might persuade you differently.

 

Certainly Dublin is in the ha’penny place compared to London. It’s common knowledge that lucrative contracts for services associated with the fight against Covid went to Tory businessmen “inside the tent”.  In my area, media, the regulator Ofcom is looking for a new chief. Paul Dacre, former Daily Mail supremo and Boris Johnson’s choice, has just withdrawn from the race, grumbling that “the process could take a year in which your life will be put on hold; and if you are possessed of an independent mind and are unassociated with the liberal/left, you will have more chance of winning the lottery than getting the job”.

 

Naturally he did not mention that he had been ruled out by the panel charged with selecting the new boss at an early stage, but had enjoyed Boris’s support nonetheless.

 

My point here, which the Dacre example combines quite nicely, is that the more strenuously hurdles and procedures are put in to place to make sure virtue rules in organisations, the more those who have achieved power can put those same procedures out in the trash.

 

I’ve just finished my second Garda vetting to work with a charity, and now face the onerous task of going through a mountain of docs online to prove to an educational institution which has employed me for over a decade that yes, I am the same person, have never been in jail, will not ask them to pay my wifi bills, and so on.

 

Is this an example of the old French saying, “the more things change, the more they remain the same?” 

 

It does appear ironic that so many of us working away with our jobs and lives and good intentions have to spend hours every year proving that we are not mass-murderers, while those in charge in London, Washington and other capitals are becoming ever more blatant in their avoidance of rules which they don’t think apply to them – as our betters.