{"id":9659,"date":"2012-10-13T11:27:02","date_gmt":"2012-10-13T10:27:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=9659"},"modified":"2012-10-13T11:41:39","modified_gmt":"2012-10-13T10:41:39","slug":"is-there-a-common-threat-to-the-recent-scandals-in-british-public-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=9659","title":{"rendered":"Is there a common thread to the recent scandals in British public life?"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>The South Yorkshire police massively falsified evidence to cover up appalling failures in their handling of the Hillsborough disaster of 1989.<\/li>\n<li>The banks obscured their casino-like investment and lending practices until they had to be baled out by the Government in 2008.<\/li>\n<li>The &#8220;Daily Telegraph&#8221; revealed astonishing abuse of the expenses system by hundreds of Members of Parliament in 2009.<\/li>\n<li>The widespread hacking activities of News International Corporation led to the closure of the &#8220;News of the World&#8221; and the establishment of the Leveson inquiry in 2011.<\/li>\n<li>And now we learn that, over a period of decades, hundreds of children and young women were abused or even raped by television personality Jimmy Savile.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These are very different situations at different times, but is there a common element? In each case, the abuse extended over a long period of time and was known by many people but not exposed or investigated until revelations long after the incidents in question. In each case, there was a culture of authoritarianism and even intimidation that made it hard for those who knew the truth to challenge those in authority and expose the wrong doing.<\/p>\n<p>The lesson is that all power tends to corrupt. Therefore all institutions &#8211; whether a police force, a company, a media organisation, a political party, a charity &#8211; need robust systems to hold authority to account in an effective and recorded manner. Openness and transparency are keys to identifying and correcting inevitable abuses of power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The South Yorkshire police massively falsified evidence to cover up appalling failures in their handling of the Hillsborough disaster of 1989. The banks obscured their casino-like investment and lending practices until they had to be baled out by the Government in 2008. The &#8220;Daily Telegraph&#8221; revealed astonishing abuse of the expenses system by hundreds of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9659"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9670,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9659\/revisions\/9670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}