I plucked this paragraph from article in today's New York Times Sunday Review by John F. Burns:
Looking back over only the last three years, Mr. Miliband has said that the three great crises to hit Britain since then — the banking crash of 2008, the furor over fraudulent parliamentary expenses in 2009 and the tabloid scandal — have been rooted in a culture that engendered a “shirking of basic responsibility” from “top to bottom” in British life, that “sends the message that anything goes, that right and wrong don’t matter, that we can all be in it for ourselves as long as we can get away with it.”
“What,” he said, “is a young person, just starting out in life, trying to do the right thing, supposed to think when he sees a politician fiddling the expenses system, a banker raking off millions without deserving it, or a press baron abusing the trust of ordinary people?”
On NPR this morning Paul Collins, writer of the book The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City And Sparked the Tabloid Wars, compares William Randolph Hearst with Rupert Murdoch. Both of them were about doing whatever it took to sell newspaper regardless of the pain caused along the way. The banks and financial institutions also are all about apolitical pragmatism. They never have to put their money where their mouths are because they always go where the money is to eat.
On a different note it is fascinating, as a duel citizen British-American, to watch as the Press on either side of the Atlantic focus on the troubles the other country is having. The Brits see a crisis in America and the Americans see a crisis in Britain in efforts to keep eyes diverted form their own already profoundly shaken financial markets.
Looking back over only the last three years, Mr. Miliband has said that the three great crises to hit Britain since then — the banking crash of 2008, the furor over fraudulent parliamentary expenses in 2009 and the tabloid scandal — have been rooted in a culture that engendered a “shirking of basic responsibility” from “top to bottom” in British life, that “sends the message that anything goes, that right and wrong don’t matter, that we can all be in it for ourselves as long as we can get away with it.”
“What,” he said, “is a young person, just starting out in life, trying to do the right thing, supposed to think when he sees a politician fiddling the expenses system, a banker raking off millions without deserving it, or a press baron abusing the trust of ordinary people?”
On a different note it is fascinating, as a duel citizen British-American, to watch as the Press on either side of the Atlantic focus on the troubles the other country is having. The Brits see a crisis in America and the Americans see a crisis in Britain in efforts to keep eyes diverted form their own already profoundly shaken financial markets.
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