Saturday 30 June 2012

Shakespeare's 'Let him have it Chris!'


I was watching 'Let him have it' last night - the story of Derek Bentley. The story is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. Cases like this are the main reason I'm so against the death penalty.

The trial was conducted by Lord Chief Justice Goddard who, legend has it, used to have to send his trousers off to the cleaners after passing the death sentence or sentencing boys to be birched. Apparently his valet was the source for this story, but I somehow doubt its veracity.

I wonder if CEOs of banks like Hamlet or Macbeth? One thing's for sure; they're in desperate need of performance enhancing drugs. The argument that bank chiefs need to be paid millions in order to attract the best talent has certainly been found wanting. The high salaries seem to attract incompetent thieves who do not know the meaning of the word honour. 

The banking scandal, the MP's expenses debacle, the phone hacking business, the Catholic shenanigans - all go to prove self-regulation doesn't work. We humans are just too morally frail for that.

I don't know why, but the Blogger editor keeps wanting to insert a white background on some of my text. I keep having to re-edit posts to eliminate the HTML manually.


7 comments:

Paula RC said...

I'm back to putting my cash under my mattress, but I keep wake up and thinking I've turned into a princess because I can't sleep ..lol

Chairman Bill said...

Just don't put a pea under the mattress...

Anonymous said...

But who monitors the monitors of the monitors? At every point a human must be trusted to "monitor" or "regulate" and there will be a fox watching a henhouse.

Chairman Bill said...

A particularly bad analogy - as most analogies are. As long as there are no vested interests on the part of the monitors in what is being monitored, then what's the issue? Regulation of the financial markets worked - until the Conservatives decided to deregulate.

the fly in the web said...

And shareholder power morphing into control by institutions doesn't help matters....taking control of businesses into the hands of - in the words of 1066 and all that - 'other barons who would understand'.

Paula RC said...

Aha... That's where I'm going wrong... Paper cash instead of hard cash. Pea got squashed and tin peas were too lumpy. lol

Anonymous said...

Indeed, no vested interest is good...but in the case of financial markets, I don't think you can find anyone without a vested interest unless it's a scitzophrenic dude on the streets without any money. Regulated banks were no different, they just had to hide things better.