Worse things happen in the City than a bit of coke-snorting

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/23/city-coke-snorting-coke-tube-libor

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As comedowns go, there can’t be many who have had worse than the city worker who was filmed snorting cocaine on the tube, only to find that the footage of his antics had been sold to the Sun and gone viral. Yet, once the bandwagon has rolled on and the shame worn off, does the tube passenger in question deserve anything more than a slap on the wrist, be it in the form of an employer’s warning or a police caution?

After all, it’s a pretty archaic attitude to demand anything more severe for what was – regardless of one’s personal views on drug use – a pretty innocuous act when set against the backdrop of 21st century hedonism and licentiousness. For all the Sun’s mock-horror headlines, branding this man a modern-day monster is a stance that’s losing traction with every passing year.

Yes, he was brazen, yes, he was shameless, and yes, he made a complete fool out of himself as much for his barely coherent words as for his class A actions, but that hardly makes him newsworthy. Similar scenes are played out thousands of times on tubes, buses and trains across the country on Friday and Saturday nights, as boozed-up/pilled-up/powdered-up (delete as applicable) revellers make their unsteady ways into town or home again after a bender.

And yet, cocaine plus City worker always equals froth-mouthed outrage across the political and social spectrum. Whatever other ills are prevalent in our towns and cities, whatever other social discord and disharmony exists, nothing unites the public like a good old City cliche – which is what the unfortunate candid camera cokehead finds himself facing today.

As I’ve said in the past, the truth about cocaine use in the City is far more mundane than the lurid fiction that exists. As a habitual user during my time in pinstripes, I was far more ostracised than celebrated for my drug of choice, finding myself driven underground (though fortunately not to the Northern Line) if I wanted to partake, while my alcoholic friends could freely down shot after shot in full view of the bar.

Whether one drug is worse than the other is merely a reflection of polite society’s opinion in any given generation; far more important is the way in which some drugs are openly encouraged and commercialised, when the mere glimpse of others provokes howls of horror and despair by the self-same pundits and pushers.

In an age of cameraphone ubiquity coupled with media budget belt-tightening, it’s no wonder that footage such as this can quickly become a news story, but the prominence given to such incidents is alarming, not least because of the sneering captions and commentary that accompanies the images themselves.

Why the Sun calls someone who works for a data provider a “City boy’” is sophistic to say the least, likewise the paper’s intent on listing his clothes as though they add weight to the prosecution’s arguments in the trial-by-Twitter-jury. Why does his wearing a “dark blue suit … [and] shiny black brogues” merit a mention (save for the questionable colour scheme)? A trainer-clad coke-snorter should, presumably, be deserving of similar attention – but, in truth, it is the consumer’s career and assumed standing in society that makes this worthy of an article at all.

As with the bizarre case of Paul Flowers, (christened the Crystal Methodist by the tabloids) here is yet another way for the press, and thus the public, to try to make sense of a world that they are usually too intellectually lazy to properly analyse. The City is of course a bloodthirsty, avaricious place to work, but the prevailing venal mindset and the true scale of the crimes that take place there can’t be tackled by publishing grainy footage of the occasional bit of coke-snorting in public.

Far better to dissect and devour the transcripts in the Libor-rigging scandal, where all-too-real and all-too-powerful traders (rather than tube-riding, high-yet-lowly data providers) played so fast and loose with the rules that their desks were known as “Treasure Island” thanks to all the illicit cash they were raking in. Far more useful to study the sudden surges in trading volume in household name stocks just before a hostile bid or a profits warning emerges, to see quite how much insider-dealing exists, and forever remains unpunished.

But to do so requires firstly a will to take the markets seriously, rather than endlessly view them through superficial prisms. And, secondly, to do so requires an element of soul-searching on our own behalf – we who vote for governments who demand no checks and balances from the Square Mile, we who demand returns from the City without worrying about the legality of how they were made – and no one wants that kind of introspection to spoil their tea break.

So we’re left to pour out our anti-City rage at the brogue-clad feet of one individual whose penchant for a line (or five) got unfortunately combined with another’s love for clandestine camerawork and the opportunity to make a quick buck from the Sun. Still, at least no one was harmed in the making of the film other than the hapless star, his nearest and dearest, and the expectations of anyone demanding more from their media than yet another spurious City cliche.