For this week’s Observer I wrote about Britain’s strange relationship with plastic surgery
What surprised me is that any doctor - even e.g. a psychiatrist with no surgical experience at all - is allowed to perform facelifts or liposuction in the private sector
For this week’s Observer I wrote about Britain’s strange relationship with plastic surgery
What surprised me is that any doctor - even e.g. a psychiatrist with no surgical experience at all - is allowed to perform facelifts or liposuction in the private sector
Mind-boggling from @marthagill.bsky.social
observer.co.uk/news/opinion...
Great piece from @marthagill.bsky.social on the state of Britain’s National Parks. Shocked highest levels of sewage discharge are on Dartmoor. Good account of historical reasons park authorities have such limited powers to manage greatest threats to park ecologies.
observer.co.uk/news/columni...
I’ve got two articles in this week’s Observer. One is a big piece of reporting on lone asylum seeking kids arriving in Britain - a group is often missed out of the conversation observer.co.uk/news/columni...
The second is on a little noticed counter to the narrative that social bonds are unravelling. By almost every indicator we are becoming more isolated, polarised and antisocial. Except one. Absolutely loads of people are volunteering observer.co.uk/news/columni...
The second is on a little noticed counter to the narrative that social bonds are unravelling. By almost every indicator we are becoming more isolated, polarised and antisocial. Except one. Absolutely loads of people are volunteering observer.co.uk/news/columni...
I’ve got two articles in this week’s Observer. One is a big piece of reporting on lone asylum seeking kids arriving in Britain - a group is often missed out of the conversation observer.co.uk/news/columni...
observer.co.uk/news/opinion... The anti-science obsession of British politics has done UK great harm, Good new Observer taking this seriously by @marthagill.bsky.social
This means our current approach - inquiries to root out offenders and bad practice - don't take the source of the problem
To prevent cover-ups, we would need to totally transform the workplace
Yes. Huge incentives, notably keeping your own job, in staying quiet about this stuff. Great examples in ents where various alarming individuals keep working for years after it’s known they are dangerous because the dynamic is if you speak up you will be the one who loses your job
Why do people choose to cover up scandals?
My theory is that it's not 'bad apples', or 'dysfunctional institutions', as we like to pretend
Every modern workplace contains the incentives for coverups
Exactly right. Any substantial organisation will be likely to circle the wagons and cover up failings.
Within it there will be some people who should know better but don't recognise their own complicity. And others who do but will lose their livelihood if they speak up.
We virtue signal when a cover-up comes to light with expressions of shock and disgust - "how on earth could that happen?"
We fool ourselves that rooting out bad apples and installing new rules will help
The truth is these things rarely makes a difference...
1. Professionals want to be team players, fit in, trust others, be loyal and please those in authority
2. Responsibility is diffused, which makes it easy for people to rationalise away their part in the process
3. Habit eventually makes the harm seem normal
We convince ourselves that institutional cover-ups are rare: the result of uniquely terrible people or uniquely dysfunctional systems
The ugly truth: cover-ups are the RULE
They are the result of normal human dynamics that come with every workplace
Maternity scandals, grooming gangs, the infected blood scandal, the Hillsborough disaster, the post office scandal, Grenfell, Windrush, sexual abuse by priests...... wherever we find serious harm we almost always find large numbers of people choosing to conceal it
I call it "the cover-up rule"
Thank you!
This is very good - it skewers the way institutions' leaders will convince themselves that bad behaviour can't happen because rules.
But we need to think more about how things actually work. We - especially senior managers - need to think much more in terms of who has power, and who really doesn't.
Cover-ups are not the exception, they are the rule.
What if the incentives pushing people towards complicity are features of MOST work places?
My piece for @observeruk.bsky.social
We have enormous capacity to be shocked by cover-ups.
Each time, we conclude they must be the result of uniquely malign characters or uniquely dysfunctional systems - and commission inquiries to rootle these out
Yet they happen again and again
I've written about institutional cover-ups in this week's
@ObserverUK
.
From grooming gangs to the post office scandal, wherever we find serious harm we almost always find very large numbers of people choosing to conceal it
Why? I think we've been getting it wrong
Enjoyed doing @lbc.co.uk cross questions just now with @simonmarksfsn.bsky.social - great fun
When activists rail against undeserving elites, this is surely a group that should come under attack
But somehow, it doesn't. Why?
My theory in this week's Observer
A: Aristocrats
This despite the fact that:
- They still own a third of the land in England + Wales
- In the last 30 years the actually got richer: their average wealth is now + £16 million
- They are as influential (by some measures) as they were in 1858
