‘Breaking bad’ the TV series intrigued me. The idea of it. What makes someone turn ‘bad’? I’ll be honest I never got beyond the first episode, but I heard and read enough about it to feel I got the message. I suppose the first question is always what constitutes ‘bad’. As I started to develop last week there are legal rules and then there are cultural rules which depend on your peer group, your generation, your background circumstances etc etc.
There is an expression that ‘possession is nine tenths of the law’. And yet, as my Company Law teacher at university in the 1980s was quick to point out when expounding his Marxist outlook on the world, ‘all property is theft.’ Both are less than accurate in my view, but it’s always struck me that it sets a useful philosophical basis with which to set the parameters for what in society we consider to be right and wrong.
After extolling the virtues of the WCA last week, I received a letter from HMRC saying that we were being monitored for failing to pay them on time. By my calculation the interest impact of the few occasions we missed the deadline (in the last 100 payments) cost them around 50p, yet they sent a letter costing more than that to tell us. I also got fined for speeding at 24 mph by the common recently at 2am when giving someone a lift home. In both cases I was on the wrong side of the rules, but I also believe that sometimes it’s a question of scale and motive.
A friend recently had her online bank account hacked and was subject to a number of illegal withdrawals. Most of us, I’m sure, regularly get scam calls trying to get into our laptops or into bank accounts. It’s frustrating, annoying and an invasion of our personal space, equivalent perhaps to a burglary but at the same time aren’t we often drawn in by ‘villains’ in drama? I know I’ve played a few on stage (including in Animal Farm The Sequel coming up in two weeks time!) – I always consider it a challenge to get into the character’s humanity.
As we approach the forthcoming budget on 30 October, there is of course some apprehension amongst the more affluent groups in our society that they’ll have to pay more. Accountants and lawyers are already busy trying to find ways round Capital Gains Tax increases and the like. On a much smaller scale I’m aware of someone who I think recently submitted a false Income Tax return and another who is probably defrauding the system in another way.
Where do we draw the line on what is right and wrong? And what examples are we setting if leaders such as Donald Trump say that it makes him smart to avoid paying taxes? One of the arguments often used by the wealthiest entrepreneurs and the superrich is that the money they earn helps create employment – which is true up to a point. We all know that government doesn’t always use our taxes in the best way (witness decisions on HS2 for example) but personally I would err towards a government more than a man who wants to use his wealth to sell trips into space.
People who find themselves on the wrong side of the law are often poverty stricken and needing support more than punishment for relatively minor infringements, yet as Natalie indicated in her Wimbledon Community Forum piece last week the debate continues about the ill-gotten gains of the slave trade and those people still being recognised in street names across the borough.
As a society, it continues to concern me that we still hold wealth as some kind of marker of success, when there are surely other goals we should aspire to. I’m not holding myself up as some kind of egalitarian evangelist here, as we all have personal choices to make, but I believe understanding what drives people to break the rules is a necessary step to a better world.