To think the UK has gone to hell in a handcart?

[Superlambaanana]

I’m just so fed up hearing about powerful people (usually men) getting away with things. It seems to have become the norm for them to do whatever the hell they like with zero consequences beyond a bit of handwringing in the media, which dies down fairly quickly, and never results in anything changing or being overturned. Leaving us ‘little people’ just having to suck it up.

Examples:

P&O sacked 800 workers in 2022. The CEO, Peter Hebblethwaite even admitted it was illegal. Yet nothing was ever done about it and he’s still CEO!

Liz Truss’s honours list. Bit of a roasting in the press for a day or two, but all the Truss supporters still got their honours in the end. Add to that Boris Johnston’s and the very dubious Charlotte Owen, and now Rishi Sunak creating a whole new honours round to make sure some party donors were rewarded in a blatant exercise in corruption.

Prince Andrew. Apparently still thinking of making a return to public life!!!!!! I mean, wtaf?!!!!!!

Michelle Mone. Has she really faced any actual consequences?

Phillip Scofield. Cheats on wife, bullies colleagues and his boyfriend, but achieves victim status because he was coming out of the closet.

Post Office scandal. Yes it’s managed to get some traction, but people will tire of it eventually and I bet that happens long before the sub-post masters get any justice or decent compensation.

Cost of living crisis and energy companies making absolute fortunes at all our expense with no prospect of bills actually coming back down to where they should be - no, instead we should be happy that they aren’t going up just as fast as last year!

Water companies. Borrowing money to give shareholders big payouts instead of actually managing the water and sewage systems to the extent that rivers are now full of faeces.

😩😫😩😫😫😩😫😩😫😫😩

Yes, there was an iron fist in that velvet glove.
She had the sense to keep her mouth shut though, which meant people tended to believe the façade.

Quite. We were sold (are still being sold) the sweet, dutiful, lovable, almost vulnerable "one of us" rhetoric. They are not, she was not. Their primary objective is self preservation and that of their obscene privilege.

Give Braverman, Badenoch, Sunak & Co another 5 years, and you won't need to do any imagining.

I love my country but there are improvements that could be made and it has to come from all sections of society.
When you have the people in charge just rolling over it and making a mockery of laws/morals. You can not expect everyone else to toe the line.

Tony Blair going to war when the country begged him not to. No accountability for the consequences that followed.
Nick Clegg sold his election promises on uni tuition fees to get into power. No accountability for the consequences that followed.
David Cameron offered a referendum without setting the conditions properly, promised to deal with the outcome either way, then promptly ran away. How he is back in government has me completely flummoxed. No accountability for the consequences that followed.
And the list goes on and on and on.

You can defiantly feel the change out there. People are becoming more selfish and inward looking and those who just want a fair society are hurting because they remember how it used to be. Was it perfect no but a damn sight better than it is now.

Come on, they're toast at the next election and they know it.

I think you were spot on until you added Philip Schofield to that list. Whatever he did do / didn’t do was a matter for him and his family and isn’t really anything to do with the rest of us.The media just made it everyone’s business. If you add him then you need to add everyone who ever had an affair (I mean, maybe you do). What he did was highly ill advised, but not illlegal.

if anything I think his punishment has been far more extreme than it deserved as his career is over. I mean, Ant McPartlin nearly killed a kid drunk driving but the world seems to have conveniently forgotten that one.

The others are legit examples of the few shitting on the many and getting away with it.

Agree, although I tend to see this as a 'human nature problem'.
What I mean is that all animals need to have a deep instinct to hold onto any resources or territory that they gain, other wise the species will not survive. Humans here are expressing the same deep instinct, no-one cedes power willingly, the more of it you have the greater your desire & ability to extend and defend it. This is why power corrupts, we always want more of it and given free reign (including the belief that it is deserved) we will take all we can.
What we need is mitigations put in place to check power BEFORE it gets entrenched and out of control.

Absolutely, we became the spivs of Europe selling off our infrastructure & dismantling communities instead of investing in people & places.
no civilised society should have utilities/transport/social care/childrens services etc in private hands, it’s always ends up that those on the receiving end of these services suffer whilst the shareholders gain. Tis a low bar that we console ourselves other countries are worse, it really shouldn’t be such a race to the bottom & the strokes that this cess pit of a government have pulled & continue to do so practically every day is shameful.

Totally agree. The RF are the ultimate self preservation society and, given their unimaginable privilege and wealth, who can honestly blame them. It's wrong, very wrong, but human nature nonetheless.

Mostly men but two of your examples are Truss crashing the economy and the disgrace of Michelle Mone.

who can honestly blame them. It's wrong, very wrong, but human nature nonetheless
@ginasevern human nature also contains a deep drive for fairness & justice, primates also express this drive:

What he did was highly ill advised, but not illlegal.

That depends on whether you believe there was underage grooming. The photos (now deleted) certainly suggest there was contact well before 16 and MM wasn't the only one to receive questionable Snapchat messages from PS. Clever move to cough up for an NDA so the finer details won't be shared.

Anyway, I'd say the biggest issue now is a collective selfishness. People chucking rubbish on the floor, being antisocial on trains etc, being disrespectful to teachers. All small things but add up to a society that isn't much fun to live in.

Very well put. Even Harold MacMillan (a Tory grandee and former Prime Minister) said at the time that "she was selling off the family silver". It's unlike me to quote a Tory but this rather sums it up. Anyone who thinks the Tories care about anything but the hierarchy of establishment and the rich need to read the history books, and they don't have to go back very far.

Go live in Rwanda then or Gaza see how you like that !

Phillip Schofield has lost everything and all he did was have an affair ( not nice but many , many others have done similar and carried on with careers ie Richard and Judy were both married to other people when they got together

Same for prince Andrew he has lost his reputation and 12 million his achual crime is allegedly slept with a legal aged woman, not underage , not rape

Hardly no consequences

So why didn't Tony Blair renationalise the utilities?

Do we really think Keir Starmer is going to? 🤔

Then it’s a police matter. If he ends up imprisoned I’ll agree it’s illegal. So far that hasn’t happened.

The last person I remember who took responsibility for their actions/department and resigned out of principle, not for their own political future, was Lord Carrington, over the Falklands, I think, under the Thatcher government. Maybe Heseltine and Westland, also under Thatcher? But ever since then, it seems to me, political resignations have been for personal reasons rather than principles.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if that makes sense, what I'm struggling to express is that it seems to me that when British politicians resign these days, it is to serve their own ends, rather than out of a sense of duty to their country.

The media are the worst. A total law unto themselves, wielding the power to turn public opinion and embarking on trials by innuendo. The media is too powerful actually for our own good. They can quite literally influence an outcome.

The mad thing is that we plebs are the vast vast majority and yet we let this tiny minority do it to us! I don't know the answer either. I doubt a Labour government will do anything truly radical and a lot of the rot has already taken hold so even if they try to run the country with integrity, plenty of business people and other leaders will continue to act with impunity.

Good post. I think you're right and it is hard to maintain perspective in a moment in time. Still though, it feels like the 90s were a hell of a lot better. Yes there were scandals and a financial crash, but I really don't remember such blatant 'we are powerful and posh so can do whatever we want and get away with it'.

Don't kid yourself - you just didn't hear about it. Thinking any time or country is immune to any of these things is very naive.

Really!! So other Prime Ministers routinely lied to parliament, illegally prorogued parliament and gave overpriced contracts to his mates who did not deliver?
You know that the corruption of the current Conservative Party is off the scale.

Tories = establishment
Establishment = corruption

And yet idiots voted for them again and again until they have broken things almost beyond repair.

On the past if a Prime Minister lied to parliament it meant they would lose their seat when the lie was discovered. Nothing happened to Boris Johnson.