SHAMELESS



Shameless adjective

1. lacking any sense of shame: immodest; audacious.

2. insensible to disgrace.
Origin:
before 900; Middle English; Old English sceamlēas.
Synonyms
1. brazen, indecent, impudent, bold, unabashed, unashamed.

2. unprincipled, hardened, corrupt.

I watched George Osborne yesterday on the BBC:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22024061

After managing to contain my anger and revulsion I paused to reflect on the moral character of the man who had just made these statements.
We are constantly faced in life with moral choices, sometimes pivotal ones and we are often given excruciatingly short periods of time to make a judgement call. It is in just such moments that our moral character is truly tested. Imagine then you are Chancellor of the Exchequer, finance minister for my overseas readers, and you are responsible for just providing major tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals in the land whilst cutting benefits for the poorest and most vulnerable. This is going to be a hard sell with the public. You are then presented with the case of the odious misogynist waster Mick Philpott, just convicted of the manslaughter of his own children, but who crucially had been a recipient of state benefits. Here is an ideal opportunity to stigmatise benefit recipients, a chance for a propaganda coup. But wait, kids have died here, is it right to use this case in such a way?
Well you have your answer, Mr Osborne made his moral choice and in those thirty or so seconds you found out all you needed to know about the moral character of the man.

Perhaps you think I am being unfair, after all we all make mistakes, I have certainly said and done things for which I am truly ashamed. So will Mr Osborne wake up this morning feeling that heavy burden of remorse, “Oh God I didn’t say that did I?” Feel an overwhelming desire to set the record state, possibly with a little political obfuscation thrown in for face saving, “ I was misquoted/misunderstood, in no way did I intend to imply…….” Possibly, but I think not, his track record speaks to the contrary, indeed his track record suggests something far darker, far more sinister, that is that the man is, in the true sense of the word, shameless.  

I have written about the steady erosion of shame before, in the context of the banking crisis.

http://alextalbot.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/two-headed-sheep.html

To be truly shameless borders on the sociopathic and it appears to be a growing phenomenon. To lack shame is to be corrupted, again in the true sense of the word,[1] to be debased and devalued as a human being.

We are now seeing the emergence, on a considerable scale, of a truly monstrous creature, one that I have previously described as akin to a 2 headed sheep, the person devoid of shame. The bankers who destroyed their banks and the wider economy who demanded that their bonuses be honoured, the NHS executives who ran hospitals that allowed the sick to be neglected and left to die and continue to draw their considerable salaries, the heads of the utility companies and the companies like Amazon and Starbucks who demand a free ride in the countries out of which they make their immense profits, and yes now our very own Chancellor of the Exchequer. We are governed by the immoral and the shameless, the body snatchers are now in charge.


[1] A word that is now used exclusively only  to apply to financial malpractice, which is to deprive the word of its important wider use.



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