A Skewed View?

Every now and then I find myself gasping at a piece of radio news and am left pondering 'did I hear that right?' The Welsh Rugby coach going public and saying that he considered cheating, but decided it was not morally right to do so. What on earth does that mean? What could the motivation be for saying something like that? Even more interesting is the response from his boss saying he should be congratulated for deciding not to cheat. WHAT?! 

I don't know about you, but I feel I could do with a pat on the back for deciding to pay for everything I needed from Tesco's the other day. For not doing a 'drive off' having filled the car up with petrol, or buying a ticket on a crowded train. The list is endless and the answer not just about weighing up the possibility of getting caught - the deterrent effect - surely it's also about responsibility?

I've written before about the the fact that for society to function well, citizens must all act responsibly, or the vast majority at least. The sad fact is that it just needs one person to be irresponsible to have a potentially devastating effect.  As you approach the brow of a blind hill, you have to believe that every driver coming the other way is acting responsibly and not on your side of the road. Maybe I'm of an unusually nervous disposition, but tall buildings always scare me regarding the possibility of something falling, having been carelessly left on a ledge or by a window. And then there's the possibility of malicious or reckless intent. I well remember one of the very first court reports I ever wrote was regarding a young man throwing bricks off a railway bridge at oncoming trains. 

Over the years my work as a probation officer has often involved cases where not acting responsibly has had tragic and profound consequences. Just one blow to the head can be terminal and the recent tragic death of an electrician working on Strictly Come Dancing serves to remind me of this. Of course the law is there to supposedly act as a deterrent and in deed this aspiration was very recently confirmed by the Appeal Court upholding four years imprisonment on two young men for inciting civil unrest by internet message. I said right from the beginning that such a sentence in no way surprised me, but I'm less sure as to whether deterrence really works.

Civilised society has always had the problem of how to encourage or ensure that everyone acts responsibly for the common good. Just one isolated act of irresponsibility can not only kill or maim, but can also be another small step towards impoverishing us all. Until one man threw a condom full of dye from the House of Commons public gallery at Tony Blair, it had been open to the chamber. Now the public are hermetically sealed behind glass screens. 

I suppose I've always tended to be a 'glass half empty' kind of a guy and should instead try to be more upbeat. Maybe I need to marvel and rejoice that most people decide to act like the Welsh rugby coach and not cheat. I try to tell myself that most of us are law-abiding for most of the time and it's only this line of work that gives me a skewed view of the world. Mmmmmm...