I once knew a man who refused point blank to believe in the truth of the weekly music charts as formerly revealed every Friday night on Top of the Pops. According to him, the whole thing was a marketing scam intended to trick gullible teens into buying the latest worthless ear-noise pumped out by the record companies under the viral influence of peer-pressure. If any given child was brainwashed into thinking everyone else his age was wasting their pocket-money on the same tuneless dirge from Generic Rapper A and Identikit Warbler B, then so would he in his own turn, the theory went. In fact, the true bestselling record each and every week of the year was by my informant’s own personal favourite act, top elderly Irish folk-music duo Foster & Allen, but the music-world PR gurus and their co-conspirators at the youth-worshipping BBC would never admit it.
I must confess, I often think much the same thing about the annual Sunday Times Bestseller Lists, the 2024 variant of which was released in late December. Looking at it, I wonder who precisely buys all those 211,300 copies of The Pinch of Nom Air Fryer Guide, 141,953 copies of Greg the Sausage Roll: Lunchbox Superhero, 148,034 editions of Politics on the Edge by Rory Stewart, or, worst of all, 126,714 printings of Intermezzo by (shudder) Sally Rooney. Then again, coming in at number 10 on the list, with 227,539 units shifted, is a crime novel named None of This Is True. Is that title inadvertently revealing?
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Ethics, politicians.
Please they are self centred, emotional and looking to fill their pockets with loot. They are the worst selection of humanity we could possibly have. Think of them as criminals, then it’s understandable why they show no interest in improving their so called constituents lives.
Any contrition shown by Government Ministers – including Truss and Sunak – should be weighed against the continuing use of the Behavioural Science Team (aka nudge unit) to weaponise climate change as part of their command and control net zero ideology. The deeply unethical use of these tactics against the British public continues unabated.
It’s a potentially useful concept, but it’s just as well that it’s flexible. After all, fashions come and go, even within an established agency within the Civil Service. It’s worth noting that many politicians are like the visible part of an iceberg, in effect. Experienced Permanent Secretaries and the ‘army’ under the sea can be difficult to manipulate, perhaps in an (internally) unpopular direction.
Basically it states that individual human rights trump collective rights.
Now if only folk had been allowed to make decisions based on personal circumstances rather than the hysterical “Do Something! Anything” decision making foisted upon us by the MSM & quite happily followed by the supine politicos who were ‘just following orders’….
This might answer the question *how* to think ethically. It does not answer *why* to think ethically. Too many people evidently don’t know.
It’s great to see this article in DS.
I was impressed with it when I first came across it as a student nurse in the 90’s, being particularly interested in ethics and it’s application to decision making in the health care setting.
It’s deontological, principal based core is central: the practical consequentialist considerations that are necessary to implement this in the real world are secondary. Many of the problems in healthcare occur because decisions are founded on looking at groups by policy makers rather than individuals.
The real problem in the context of the COVID decision making is I’m not too sure that career politicians are guided by anything that could be described as universal ethical principles.
Politicians will generally act to keep themselves in power by whatever means they think they can get away with. It’s up to the people to stay vigilant to keep them honest.
Are some people trying to produce a module for future PPE courses?
I don’t need an essay in ethics to confirm that lockdowns are deeply immoral, dangerous and injurious to physical and mental health.
Let’s drop all the pseudo theorising and hope that maybe we can get some of the rotten barstewards in court and then porridge for the rest of their natural. Forlorn I know but…
It was the SAGE Team who proposed to scare the bejesus out of the British people in order to gain compliance with their draconian and completely pointless Rules.
We already know that there were people in SAGE who have no understanding of ethics whatsoever (probably most of them). The Minutes of SAGE meetings should identify who proposed and supported using fear as a control mechanism and that person/those people should not be allowed anywhere near Government in the future.
And the Government’s PsyOps Unit must be closed down.
What the minutes (if they exist) will probably not record is the “interests” of the participants. If they all had to declare their interests to the general public when making a presentation, it could have been very different. If they had to do that, they might not have tried it on. Nothing democratic about the politics involved in that group.
Let’s take Bunter as an example. His ethics seem to revolve around his need to be ‘loved’, with particular emphasis on his desire for warm feelings in the vicinity of his wallet and his zipper.