This piece of news from Britain has got me seething.
A brave (if belatedly so) pharma executive finally decided to stand up to his bosses (Johnson & Johnson, of Baby Shampoo fame) after being made to pay EUR4.5m in bribes to Greek surgeons and other doctors.
He got 12 months in jail for his trouble.
Now I, for one, find this shameful. Surely, In order to be a whistleblower you have to be involved, however remotely, in something dirty. If the UK laws will not give whistleblowers immunity in such cases then what's the point of blowing the whistle? Few people are that morally upright.
Anyway, I've got an alternative which is more humane than getting bummed by rough geezers at Her Majesty's Pleasure and may render a public service: exile.
Send this man to Greece and let us make him Head of Procurement in the Greek National Health Service. [Note that the job probably doesn't exist yet so we'll have to create it in the process]. After a few days of telling suppliers they'll get paid in five years rather than the 10 days that are specified by guidance in his native UK, or that he intends to default on hospital debt, he may well find himself wishing he were locked up with violent sexual deviants. But in the process, he could tell us who all of those greasy-palmed medical men are so we can bury their careers under tons of medical waste.
Give us your whistleblowers, Britain. In time, we might get them to breed with our womenfolk and have many whistleblowing babies.
