Lousy As Bloody Rooks

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Been watching some of today's testimony before the the Post Office Scandal Public Enquiry from Mark Davies, former Group Communications Affairs Director for Post Office Limited. It's interesting that the further up the food-chain of corporate management this enquiry interrogates, the slicker and less intimidated the individuals concerned become: almost to the point of pathological dissociation from the events they actively participated in. Rather than simply lying about their individual culpability, the current lot seem perfectly happy in claiming the high ground of having being misguided, in hindsight of their appreciation of their former misdeeds.

Rather than than throwing other participants under the bus, these latter interviewees seem confident in extolling the virtues and actions of their seniors in the affair, whilst denying personal culpability on the grounds that that was then and this is now, despite solid evidence of their contemporaneous complicity in attempting to paper over the truth about the problems with the Horizon system, over - to be frank - a very protracted period of time; even beyond the point when that truth was totally out in the open and being legally tested in the courts. But still the denials go on. Lousy as bloody rooks*, indeed.

*I quote from Richard Holmes' BBC book, 'The Western Front', where he cites a platoon sergeant veteran of the First World War, with regard to the dissemination of information within his unit: 'The officer read the map: he [the platoon sergeant] ensured that the boys followed in good order: "Lousy as bloody rooks we was, lousy as bloody rooks."

Comments

  1. Anonymous15 May 2024 at 17:09

    History tells us that we NEED another WW; it's the ONLY way that the left pick up voters and we NEED a radical steer to Port!!
    Meanwhile:
    In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond - and his response is magnificent:
    “Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:
    I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.
    What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.
    Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.
    Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?
    Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.
    God bless you all!"
    Kurt Vonnegut
    Via Joe Stoner

    ReplyDelete

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