Decaying from the head down
“Civilizations, like fish, decay from the head down” is a familiar phrase which contains a profound truth. This is that if people don’t carry out at least their contracted duty, societies decay because people won’t trust each other to do what they are supposed to do, in law, by contract, or by long-established custom.
While contemporary Western governance: legal, political and administrative, is replete with examples of top people not doing the jobs they are paid to do without fear or favour, the rot can start anywhere in the system where people have to make decisions affecting other people.
A Cricket Example
A contemporary on-going example is in the cricket Test Match series between England and Australia. Having watched bowler after bowler breaking the basic rule that part of his front foot must land inside the batting crease at the bowler’s end (restricting him from getting too close to the batsman at the receiving end) the redoubtable commentator Jonathan Agnew revealed on the BBC Five Live programme that umpires are now reluctant to call a no-ball because they are afraid TV cameras may show them to be wrong.
What they now do, apparently, is actually against the rules they are paid to uphold. They do not attempt to judge whether a ball is illegal while it is being bowled by the bowler running right next to them – an easy thing to do – they only call a no-ball after the TV system has shown it to be so, if the batsman would otherwise be called out to a catch, leg before wicket or clean bowled. No-balls of this type can intimidate the batsman even if it does not actually get him out, particularly if the bowler is 6 foot 5 inches tall or more as several are.
The other practical result of this ignoring of umpiring duty is that the batsman is denied the opportunity to score runs from the no-ball. This happened in the final session of play on August 7th when the English bowler bowled to the Australian batsman, who snicked the ball to a fielder and was given out. A few seconds later, the umpire, having consulted the TV camera, then declared a no-ball and the batsman was called back to resume his innings, a clumsy interruption of his concentration.
The commentator Jonathan Agnew upholds the law, while some excuse this behaviour
There followed an extended discussion on air about something that has obviously worried many in cricketing circles. Incredibly a former player disagreed with Agnew, appearing to defend what appears to be a regular practice among some international umpires.
Police Examples
This is exactly the same attitude taken by senior policemen when attempting to excuse their dereliction of duty in not investigating and prosecuting the truly dreadful crimes perpetrated against English girls in Rotherham, Oxford and Oldham, over at least a ten year period up to 2013, because of fear that it would be against the prevailing pro-ethnic political group-think and they would therefore upset the local Pakistani communities from where the perpetrators mostly came.
Likewise we now hear from the head of the National Police Chiefs’ Council that the police will increasingly not investigate what are referred to as “traditional crimes” such as burgling of people’s homes.
Immigration
Fear of offending against the pro-ethnic group-think dominates the administration of the immigration system, which is why almost no illegal immigrants (nearly all failed asylum-seekers) are ever sent back to where they came from. (See next post on the Calais-immigrant crisis.)
Fear is in fact the predominant common emotion of many, perhaps a majority, of people in positions of public responsibility in contemporary Britain and the USA, and as a result they do not do their duty.
