LETHAL FALL OUT

We’ve all learned only too well about the disastrous secondary effects of explosions, volcanic or otherwise. Radiation from cracked nuclear reactors made things horribly worse after the Tsunami in North Japan, and the leaking oil from the BP undersea explosion didn’t just waste vast quantities of oil but, far worse, polluted vast areas of ocean, destroying its marine life.

The explosion of scandal which has destroyed the News of the World is already, in less than a week, following this pattern and reverberating in other critically important public areas of the nation. It is clearly set to cause massive pollution and destruction beyond itself. As with the escape of the BP oil this it is incredibly difficult to contain, even if there are many involved in frantic efforts to head it off and save their skin.


The fall out has already gone well beyond the demise of just one newspaper and has invaded the News International media empire; Rupert Murdoch has already lost his ambitious dream of owning BskyB, and there is a shaking of even his American corporate fortress. To change the metaphor, he has a massive personal bush fire to put out, if he can!


But others, on a much wider and more important front, have been caught up in the fall out, most spectacularly the Metropolitan Police, which stands accused of failing to get a grip on the phone hacking. This is not simply because it has shown incompetence, but because its senior officers have been involved in hugely damaging relationships with some of those senior staff of the News of the World who clearly were operating in a culture of corruption. So both the Commissioner of the Met. and his Assistant have resigned within 24 hrs of each other and with critical policing tasks (including the Olympics) on their desks. This Newspaper “Tsunami” really is running a long, long way up the beach!

How far will it go? There are those who are hoping and plotting that it will actually overrun David Cameron, the Prime Minister, and leave him beached like the Police Chiefs. He, too, was over-familiar with the corrupt News of the World leadership and has mud sticking to him that can be exploited. This sadistic scenario can be justified as a “political opportunity for the Opposition” and fair game. David Cameron comes back from Africa to build his breakwater even as I write. It will be his biggest test yet.

The fact is we don’t know quite how far it will all go, but what we do know is that there is a massive “shaking” going on of national leadership. It has been happening for some time now and has already engulfed the financial world. Now it’s the world of political leaders and the forces of law and order. I wonder who will be next. All this comes at a time when what we desperately need is firm, clear and unimpeded national statesmanship, both at home and abroad. It is all too reminiscent of the chaotic historical state of affairs in Israel in the years following Amos’ prophetic word of national judgement.

There’s a good side to all this: it is an opportunity to clean out some very dank areas of corruption in our national life. I pray God may be in this process, and that it will be done. There is a dark side to all this: the growing confusion and dislocation of proper government is exposing more than ever the appalling fall in the nation’s moral standards, for all of this comes out, not of wrong policies, but of corrupt individual behaviour. That is not something God will overlook.


Bob




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