At the most successful period of my life I had some glimpses of that super-upper-class. I'm very glad I never became part of it. To get there requires more boot-licking and hypocrisy that I would ever have stomached. But at least part of my fall from Grace, as it were, was telling the truth to certain people who didn't want to hear it. At least I got out without being framed, which was the way a person in another very senior position who suffered the same problem - telling the truth to people who didn't want to hear it - was got out of the way.
I'd rather be broke and have a reasonably clear conscience.
something that made me feel a little bit better about the way I crashed and burnt at university was finding out how a contemporary, who even then was marked as a high-flyer, managed to eff it up for themselves after graduating and landing a dream job. I'm not gloating, I'm really not, and I still take the point of view that everybody should have a second chance if it goes wrong, even if it's your own stupid fault. Anyway.... my uni contemporary landed a dream job at the BBC. After a while they left to start a PR/marketing consultancy. They were married to a BBC journalist. The BBC spouse worked on a BBC current affairs show and if they needed to do an interview or a feature with a business, or an individual, they'd go to somebody on their ex-BBC spouse's PR client list. The ex-BBC spouse in PR would then boast that if you become my client and pay my reasonable facilitation fees, I can get you national exposure and favourable publicity on the BBC.
Well, this worked until the BBC found out, or was tipped off. The PR company went bust as its client list decided it did not want to pay hand-over-fist for bad publicity of this sort. The now-not-directly-employed-by-the BBC spouse - well, is still working in broadcasting, but, only just. (noted recently that this person sees nothing incongruous in advertising that he gives lessons to arms dealers in how they can get good PR and present themselves well in news interviews...)
I found myself thinking.... (apart from "
however effed-up my life was, it never got as far as extremely unsympathetic full-page news articles in the national papers, which basically said to the world and to people in the same profession as me, that my personal and professional ethics are non-existent"). Just how entitled, or arrogant, or greedy, or blind, do you need to be to think you'll get away with that sort of thing, and that you will not be penalised for it?
On the culpability scale as a misdemeanour, this is way below Maxwell/Epstein levels, but still somewhat corrupt - the PR firm using a BBC association to generate business for itself, and a BBC journalist/presenter actively abusing their position, and the BBC's reputation, for personal gain. The sense of all-else-obscuring entitlement, perhaps - two people already from well-off backgrounds, products of expensive private education, at university in the Thatcherist 1980's, maybe brought up in an environment where it's understood if you cut the odd corner or fudge things a bit, that's how it's done, if you want to be successful.
Does this sort of "they'll never find out" or "I'm already successful, I'm from a good background, the rules do not apply to me" or "I deserve this. I am entitled" attitude get stronger and deeper the further up (or down) you go, where bigger stakes are involved, you get more distanced from ordinary life as lived by the majority, and the possibilities for chicanery get so much bigger?