SHAMELESS: A RESPONSE TO DANNY FINKELSTEIN.

In politics shame it seems is out of fashion, passé, uncool, indeed to invoke the idea that someone should be ashamed of, for example, refusing to tell the electorate precisely who will be affected by £10 billion worth of welfare cuts,  is it seems being ‘childish.’

ALEX TALBOT ‏@ALEXTALBOT116  APR 30 HTTP://WWW.THEGUARDIAN.COM/POLITICS/2015/APR/29/DANNY-ALEXANDER-TORY-PLANS-WELFARE-CUTS-CHILD-BENEFITS … STILL NO SENSE OF SHAME @DANNYTHEFINK ?
BTW I COME FROM FAMILY OF 5. CHILD BENEFIT VITAL £ FOR MY MOTHER.

DANIEL FINKELSTEIN ‏@DANNYTHEFINK
@ALEXTALBOT116 YOUR SUGGESTION THAT SHAME IS APPROPRIATE IS CHILDISH.
8:11 AM - 30 APR.

Note the absence of argument, the smart derisory response with its implied stifled snigger, from an otherwise intelligent commentator. It seems that shame is now to be treated in the same was as ‘evil.’ Dismissed as an anachronism part of the language of the politically naïve untutored in the ways of realpolitik.
Shuan Wright PCC Rochdale
Shameless before Commons Committee

If the concept of shame does continue to be dismissed in this way it is not without consequences. Shame, a feeling that some actions are unworthy, incur disgrace and for which we must pay a penalty both in social disapproval and in the intense discomfort of having done violence to our conscience.   As I have written elsewhere we are now beginning to see the emergence of the truly shameless individual. The bankers who destroyed their banks and the wider economy who still demanded that their bonuses be honoured, the NHS executives who ran hospitals that allowed the sick to be neglected and left to die but continue to draw their considerable salaries. Those who presided over the industrial scale rape and abuse of young girls in Rochdale, who then refuse to own that they did anything amiss and seek to stay glued to their well remunerated posts.  The heads of the utility companies and companies like Amazon and Starbucks, who demand a free ride in the countries out of which they make their immense profits and of course our very own Chancellor of the Exchequer. All of them I suspect would snigger at the notion that they should be ashamed.
These truly shameless individuals, the booted and suited sociopaths, increasingly representative of the age in which we live, now hover like grim reapers over the decline of social cohesion and anything that might be reasonably called a civilised society. 

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