You know what they say about living in interesting times. I thought I’d seen it all over the past year or so but our establishment have outdone themselves with this latest example of how the privileged are building a mechanism to ensure they are above the law.
The whole Jim Flavin\Fyffes\DCC insider trading thing was serious at the time but chump change in light of all that has happened recently. The Shipsey report is mind boggling though, especially in the context of the times we live in. Matt Cooper has a good rant about it in today’s Sunday Times but frankly I don’t think he is nearly outraged enough.
Paul Appleby, the head of the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE), the man responsible for ensuring corporate entities here in Ireland behave themselves said - “There’s no way that any court would sanction a director for having followed the company’s legal advice”. Well ain’t that just peachy – I suppose we should just get rid of the courts entirely then, and leave it all up to the lawyers to tell us what to do. Having looked at the ODCE’s “Strategy Statement” I’m wondering if someone hasn’t become confused by the fact that “Sanctioning” (Strategic goal 4) is an autoantonym – I’d have thought it should mean “punishing” in this context but clearly “encouraging and allowing” seems to be how it’s being interpreted.
Anyway I’m proposing that we ask them to ditch the “Strategy” statement and adopt this blog post’s title as their motto as it seems to be the line they are taking.
