đ¶Oh the Grand old Duke of York, he had 12 million quid, he gave it to someone he didn’t know for something he never didđ”
âOnce upon a time, Britons would have been astonished and appalled to find scandal simultaneously bespoiling their royal family, prime minister and largest police force. We are less shockable now. Thereâs a good reason, which is that there is much less naive reverence for institutions than there was in the past. Thereâs also a bad reason for our diminished capacity to be scandalised by scandal. We have become wearily accustomed to seeing the public trust betrayed. Where once jaws would have dropped, grotesque misconduct in public life often provokes no more than a fleeting furore or a resigned shrug. That makes us part of the problem, too. When we expect to be let down, we settle for further decay. The British wonât get better service from their institutions until they start demanding it and so insistently that they canât be ignored.â [Concluding paragraph : Britain has had royal, political and policing scandals before, but never all three at once – Andrew Rawnsley]