Lord Hutton, where are you? As our corrupt government and corrupt, self-serving institutions set up ever more inquiries led by eminent judges to prove that our corrupt, wasteful, self-serving bureaucrats are as clean as fresh snow, our country urgently needs people with the skills of Lord Hutton.
Remember Hutton? It was he who (implausibly in my opinion) ruled that Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell were honest men and that there had been no “dodgy dossiers”. With so many new inquiries, we need more Lord Huttons.
There are 2 or 3 or 4 inquiries running at the BBC. Surely only a very skilled judge will be able to conclude that the BBC’s thousands of overpaid, overpensioned, incompetent managers never knew nothing about Savile’s paedophilia.
Then there’s the worthless Ofgem. Since 2006/7 Ofgem’s cost to us has more than doubled from £38.8m a year to over £78.7m. Yet in its 25 very expensive (for us) years existence, it has never once occurred to Ofgem to question why so many foreign companies want to own UK power companies and why these foreign firms can make 4 times the profit in the UK than they can make in their own properly regulated home markets. Now a whistleblower has revealed that power companies have been rigging the wholesale gas market, the useless Ofgem has reluctantly agreed to start an inquiry. Will Ofgem also need to appoint a judge so that its supposed inquiry reaches the necessary conclusion that our energy markets are cleaner than clean?
And there’s the FSA. In 2006/7 the FSA was costing about £260m. Last year this had shot up to £526m. As US authorities chased our banks over moneylaundering, the FSA did nothing. As US authorities chased our banks over fixing the Libor rate, the FSA did nothing. Now our banks have been implicated in fixing energy markets, the FSA has reluctantly announced it will set up an inquiry. Once again, the FSA will need a skilled figure to prove that the utterly useless, self-serving bureaucrats at the FSA are really highly effective regulators and that our banks are really nice and friendly and have never rigged anything ever, honest guv.
And there’s also an inquiry into whether a previous inquiry into abuse at a children’s home did its job. So we’ll be getting a cover-up of a cover-up. Maybe in a few years there will be an inquiry into an inquiry into an inquiry.
Still, at least all these inquiries provide well-paid work for Britain’s every malleable legal elites.