Metropol

Got to agree with Stu on all this. It's a perverse irony that the higher you get up life's greasy pole, the less culpability you have. Nick a bottle of whisky from your supermarket = end up in court. Illegally invade a country that poses no threat to you and kill thousands of innocent civilians and your own solidiers = don't end up in court.

Even if Ian Blair were to resign, he'd immediately be given another job in a high place quicker than you could say "jumping the ticket barrier". Just look at Jeffrey Archhole and Jonathan Aitken - sleazy lying crooked little shits who went to prison, but the establishment seems to think it's some terrible misunderstanding and they're actually jolly good chaps. So as soon as they got out of the clink, the offers of work started rolling in again. And look at Peter Mandelson - resigned twice after serious wrongdoings, but on each occasion was given a replacement job better and higher-paid than the one he'd just resigned from.

And while on the subject of the De Menezes case - what's the bloody point of fining the police? It's just moving a big pot of cash from one public body to another. The CPS (i.e. the taypayer) spending X amount to prosecute the Met Police (i.e. the taypayer), who then pay a huge fine of taxpayers' money back to, errr, the taxpayer. Brilliant! The Met Police will simply ask the government for more money to cover the shortfall in their budget caused by the fine, and the government will give it back to them. Fining a public body isn't a punishment. A punishment would be docking money from the salaries and pensions of those who did wrong.

rdobbie wrote:Got to agree with Stu on all this.

Many thanks for your support! It is much appreciated.
(The brown envelope stuffed with used 20s is under the mat by your front door!)

I similarly agree with rdobbie's point about imposing fines on publicly funded bodies. The Civil Service do it all the time. It keeps hundreds of people in jobs just shuffling theoretical money around between not just major government departments, but minor adminisrative areas within minor sub-departments. You end up with someone employed at a cost of £20K to have a saving of 2p in the budget.

I thought MOD was bad, but the NHS is something out of a Monty Python script. :roll:

But that was a rant which digresses from the point of this thread!