We Get the Policiticans and Business Leaders We Deserve

Like most people who watched Channel 4's recent Dispatches on "cash for influence", I was appalled at the behaviour of senior politicians who were prepared to put their own personal interests ahead of their duty as public servants.

The official statements that followed each of the covertly filmed cameos, were carefully drafted by legal advisers who proclaimed that they hadn't "broken any rules" and therefore had done nothing "wrong". Well frankly, you don't have to be a Corporate Philosopher or Professor of Organisational Ethics to know that if "not breaking any rules" is the best we can do in terms of our morality, then we're all going to hell.

That's happened to a morality that puts others first? What's happened to a morality that puts courage, justice, humility and love at the centre of our working lives, as well as our personal lives? The answer is that we're all forgetting that true well-being is not about getting more money and more stuff. It's about the joy (and pain) of living and working with and for others. "Greedy bankers" and "corrupt politicians" are as much a product of our materialistic, all-consuming civilisation as poverty, landfill and climate change.

We get the politicians and business leaders we deserve - unless we're prepared to do something about it.