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Scandals and misconduct do not come out of nowhere. When people misbehave there is usually a clue, often more than one, usually ignored (even if carefully collected and correctly filed) or hand-waved away as unimportant (see the Angiolini Report on Wayne Couzens, for instance). The same applies to scandals involving organisations and actions (or a lack of action) by many people. There were warnings; there were whistleblowers; people were told. Coupled with this is a failure to take this information…

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Senator Howard Baker’s question: “What did the President know and when did he know it?” went to the heart of the Watergate scandal. But it was another question, asked almost as an aside, which provided the damning evidence: the question to Alexander Butterfield, a Nixon aide, about what recording devices, in addition to the taped instructions given by Nixon to his secretary, there were in the White House. Those tapes provided the evidence that the conspiracy went right to the…

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“You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.” (LBJ) Wise advice. A great pity it was not heeded by Scotland’s Justice Minister in 2021 when The Hate Crime and Public Order Act was passed. It is one of the SNP’s most badly drafted, illiberal and dangerous laws, despite stiff competition from the…

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Irish voters have inflicted a comprehensive and humiliating political defeat on Ireland’s political and NGO class, which overwhelmingly supported proposals presented as “progressive” measures updating the Constitution.  Why? Shortly, the changes were badly drafted, unclear as to their purpose, erased women and seemed to reduce the state’s obligations to vulnerable groups, particularly the disabled and their carers.  Some background Ireland’s 1937 constitution reflected a conservative Catholic approach to social matters. Article 41.2 referred to a woman’s “life within the home”…

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This evening the BBC will be showing “Sarah Everard: the search for justice“. It will make grim viewing. There is something troubling about the wish to see a programme about the brutal end of a woman’s life, a woman who will remind many of us of their own daughter, sister, friend, colleague. That it was made with the consent of Sarah Everard’s family is perhaps one reason why it should be watched – to understand why what happened happened, to…

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35 years ago – 14 February 1989 – Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie was issued. A foreign leader instructed members of his religion world-wide to murder him because he had written a book which that leader claimed insulted his religion. After the initial outrage, some Labour politicians started rowing back, claiming that the reaction of Muslims here who supported the fatwa was understandable. It was an unprincipled, craven stance influenced by a desire not to offend Labour voters. Threatening the…

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Of the sloping-shouldered former Post Office Chairman, Henry Staunton, whose interview is the lead story in today’s Sunday Times. There is much of interest in it, but this detail stuck out: “Early on, I was told by a fairly senior person to stall on spending on compensation and on the replacement of Horizon, and to limp, in quotation marks – I did a file note on it – limp into the election,” he said. “It was not an anti-postmaster thing, it was just…

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At the heart of most scandals is a conflict of interest, often more than one, which has been allowed to develop, not mitigated or managed, or simply ignored. Being able to recognise these is essential to good public administration. It is essential to good legislation (a header could be written about the policy corruption inherent in governments funding lobby groups to promote policies the government wants, then consulting with only these groups who, unsurprisingly, agree wholeheartedly with the policies suggested….

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