Years ago, on the Late Late Show, there was a segment one
night where various small enterprises were given an opportunity to sell
themselves and what they were doing to the public. One particular entrepeneur stood up and said:
‘My name is ----- ----- and I am a job creator’. No doubt true enough as far as it went. But the fact was that the creation of jobs
was ancillary to the main purpose of setting up his business, which was to make
money. Indeed, if he could have made
more money by laying workers off, he probably would have done so. And one couldn’t complain about it, that’s
the logic of the system.
As far as
whistleblowing is concerned, no doubt there are people of principle
involved. But the problem is that once
you start creating a profile of whistleblowing as being something heroic and
praiseworthy and glamorous, then, as is often the case with charity or
humanitarian work, you run the risk of attracting those for whom the matter of
principle is more or less ancillary.
And if you go even
further and create some sort of official category of whistleblowing, including
safeguards against suffering any negative consequences from one’s informing—indeed,
perhaps even gaining from it—then you are really opening a Pandora’s Box. All
the old innate evils of the human condition will then come into play: greed,
begrudgery, vengeance etc. etc.
How soon before you
have people before the employment tribunals or the courts claiming they were
denied benefits or promotions because they were whistleblowers? And, knowing the way companies and
organisations tend to run away from such controversies, arguably opening up
informing as a potentially royal road to advancement?
There is also the
question of opening up another avenue for the growth of the cancer of bureaucracy:
something that will be dealt with in the next mailing.
