A question of public trust

By Jason Moore THE other night I left the office with a real sense of gloom; there was yet another political scandal in the Balearics, the local minister for tourism had resigned and the U.S. Congress had rejected the massive U.S. banking bailout. It was a great day to work on a newspaper but very worrying when you were outside the office. We are living in very difficult times; it seems incredible that your savings could be lost because your bank had been borrowing money or lending money to someone it shouldn´t had. In the Balearics the cases of political corruption (alleged) continue and so does the political infighting which led to the resignation of the minister for tourism. This state of affairs puts a question mark over our form of regional government and whether or not it is the right system for these islands or should Madrid and the central administration have greater control. In the same way (but obviously for different reasons) there are question marks over the banking industry the same can be said for local government. Both rely heavily on public trust and at the moment it appears that both have failed us. The banking industry and the local authorities should be above such scandals and it is a great pity that they have not reached such heights.