Hypocrisy and the pyramid of folly

“We know no situation so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality” said Macaulay.

The current torrent of revelations reminds me of kids when someone smashes a window. Nobody owns up. “He did it”. “No I didn’t – she did!” I did NOT! He did.”

The only difference is that with the kids, there was usually only one guilty party. The people running our little world are all guilty.

Take the greedy buggers in the City. One said the other day that you wouldn’t get the best staff if you didn’t offer the best bonuses. “Many of these people work incredibly hard.”

What are you talking about, Alistair Brown of Mastercard Advisers – and who do you give your crappy advice to? There’s a girl serving pizzas in Icco in Goodge Street who works harder than anyone I’ve ever seen. I bet she’s on a minimum wage with no bonus. And she’s infinitely more attractive than any of you vultures.

Paying the biggest bonuses only gets the greediest staff – as we have seen. The best financial man around is Warren Buffet who certainly doesn’t operate on a maximum greed basis. When I worked for Ogilvy and Mather they paid so modestly compared to many others that they joked that you needed a private income to work there. You did it because you wanted to be the best and work with the best. The man who ran Grey – one of their competitors – made obscene amounts of money, but his agency was no fun and no good.

The politicians have been busy blaming the City for things going wrong. But now a group of eminent economists have revealed that the useless (government-appointed) regulators are more to blame than any share gamblers. Having dealt with the Financial Services Authority, I believe them.

And who would believe politicians anyhow, when the biggest thief of the lot is the “Justice” Minister? But can you credit what you read in the papers? Journalists are the biggest ponces and freeloaders ever. “You cannot hope to bribe or twist – thank God! – the British journalist. But seeing what the man will do unbribed, there’s no occasion to.”

And as if life isn’t miserable enough, the bureau-Nazis want to make it harder to enjoy yourself – and starve the roots of the music indutry. There’s a new piece of misery-guts nitpicking called Form 696 which publicans and managers of other small venues are being forced to comply with. They must give police a pile of useless information , including the names, aliases, private addresses and phone numbers of all musicians and other performers appearing at their venue, and the ethnic background of the likely audience.

The ethnic background? Whose sweaty,politically correct arse ARE you marooned up, you utter morons? If the audience came from Mars what the hell is that to do with you?

If those responsible don’t obey this insane request they could lose their licences or even get fined or imprisoned. This idiocy already applies in 21 London boroughs, but people in the music business fear it will be copied in other cities. All too likely. Then the police will spend even more time on bureaucratic crap and even less chasing criminals. It will also will make putting on live bands next to impossible for most small venues. An ‘open mike’ night could not happen under such rules.

Please join this group to protest against form 696 and other totalitarian dementia which could kill off live music everywhere. Please sign the petition on the 10 Downing Street website at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Scrapthe696

But all this is symptomatic of why so much of the world is up the creek. Everything is driven by an utter inability on the part of those in charge to distinguish, even vaguely, between what matters and what doesn’t.

There is a sort of upside-down pyramid of folly. The higher you get, the bigger the fools, the more unable they are to tell right from wrong, the more disastrous the consequences and the more those below – us, folks – suffer.

Thus, if you let a man run finances (G. Brown, Fuckwits Anonymous, or for that matter G. Bush, Lifetime President, Fuckwits Anonymous) who can’t understand that spending more money than you have is stupid, well, you end up working like a dog for the next 20 years subsidising that one man’s stupidity. And pay him a pension after he stole yours.

One mark of our lack of moral compass nowadays is that anyone here should really wonder – even for a second – whether the crooks in politics who’ve been found out should be prosecuted. Of course they should. Vigorously. Take to the streets if they aren’t!

Oh, and if you’re thinking, “well, it’s much worse with Berlusconi”, or, “look at those bastards in Burma” just remember: “all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Next, I’ll give you the Barack Obama story I promised.