The blameless society
18 07 08 - 05:41 The code proposed a few months ago to curb excessive secrecy and profiteering by private equity firms is, risibly, a voluntary one. Recently it was reported in Which? magazine that NHS patients do not see the point of complaining because of the risk of victimisation. And where consultations of public opinion are held – as for example on nuclear energy, GM foods, or the third runway at Heathrow – the government still goes ahead even though it didn't get the "right" result.In the private sector too, Metronet, which ran three-quarters of the public-private partnership London Underground refurbishment programme, racked up a projected overspend of £2bn after awarding the contracts to its own building consortia shareholders, but nobody was sacked and the taxpayers bailed them out.
The ITV phone-in premium-rate competitions extracted £8m from viewers by deception, but nobody was dismissed over the scandal. Nearly 9,000 homes and businesses in Hull were badly flooded last June because Yorkshire Water failed to act on several warnings of disaster over the previous 11 years, but no heads rolled.
Why does this happen? There is regulatory capture by the vested interests, or the regulators lack clout in terms of staffing and finance compared with those they're targeting. The penalties are often grossly inadequate to have real impact. Regulators, usually chosen by civil servants, may be selected so as to give government a quiet life and not upset the apple cart too much. A commission of inquiry is needed to rectify these flaws and to lay down adequate ground rules for regulatory effectiveness. Or, better still, public ownership should come back on the political agenda as a better way of running things.
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Our society is run by corporations, to which the government is subservient. They want to maximise profit and exploit the taxpayer. So it is no surprise if they are unaccountable, when people continue to support the system with little complaint. What is needed is for us all to withdraw consent from this consumer society and stop voting for the lib/lab/con.
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