Don't Stop at the Bottom...

In watching the grilling of Stephen Bradshaw, Post Office Investigator, yesterday at the Post Office Scandal enquiry, I realised that neither pity nor schadenfreude would be in any way appropriate emotional responses to the spectacle. That he was part of a business structure - unfortunately familiar to many of us who have been at the bottom of the food-chain of corporations and 'institutions' - and hence essentially a willing patsy in what will certainly be his eventual downfall, does not warrant pity, but rather the understanding that some people can be coerced into behaving inhumanely by their employers, under threat of loss to themselves, and bypassing their moral filters. 

He was essentially hired psychological muscle. Employed by a company whose tiered management structure - line management is the curse of modern life: I know from personal experience as I've said before - is geared to shunt all responsibility for decision-making down to as low a level of the pecking-order as possible. As far as schadenfreude is concerned, ordinarily I would revel in the brow-beating of a former bully - and there is no denying he will deserve all he gets for his conduct in his dealings with the victims of this affront to justice - but the fear is that the enquiry will stop short of the real influencers of this affair: those at the top of the Post Office structure who ultimately should bear the brunt of legal redress for this whole affair. I'll reserve my schadenfreude for them, if and when they are broken on the wheel.