SHAMELESS
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:-
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.
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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