Well, this is a nice to-do and no mistake. The constant eye-popping revelations about the people and institutions that we used to cherish and respect have led to the point that it is quite hard to know where to place our trust. We thought we were in a world of certainty and reliability but it ain't necessarily so.
For instance, you can't trust hospitals because they will kill you and pretend it wasn't their fault and you can't trust GPs because they will just put you on whatever they have been bribed to prescribe.
You can't trust the police because they will fit you up to protect their gangster mates, you can't trust the press because they are rooting through your rubbish to see if there is anything they can use against you and you can't trust the legal profession because they are hiring people to spy on you.
There is no reprieve in sport as you can not trust cricketers as they take money to throw games and you can't trust footballers because they bet on their own side losing and cyclists can't be trusted as they have more drugs inside them than Boots.
You can't escape to different climes as you can't trust the cruise lines to deposit you back alive and you can't trust the airlines as the pilots may be drunk, or they will divert the plane to Saskatchewan because a passenger disrespected a steward. Besides, you can't go on holiday because when you call the insurance company from Spain on a Tuesday to explain that you have broken your leg while crossing the road, they will tell you that crossing the road in Spain on a Tuesday is expressly excluded from your policy.
You can't stay at home either as the energy companies are ripping you off, you can't trust the phone companies as they hide the best tariffs and your contents insurance won't pay for anything you would expect it to, ever. You probably can't even get household insurance because you are living in an area of flood risk (Britain), and you can't move because your estate agent will try to get you to accept a really low offer as he is trying to sell your house to the property developer who is giving him a back-hander and you can't trust the seller's estate agent as he is trying to sell you a damp, rot infested money pit that will be worth the price of a newspaper when the market crashes, and you can't trust economists to tell you when that might be because none of them know what they are talking about.
When you eat out, you can't trust your waiter as he has stirred your cocktail with his cocktail and there's a rat in their kitchen which is why they call it ratatouille. You can't buy a coffee as the company you are buying it from doesn't pay its due as its head quarters are registered as being on the Moon, for tax purposes. You can't buy anything on the internet or from any company larger than the man who cleans your windows for the same reason. And he doesn't pay his taxes either, as he claims to be disabled despite the fact that he ran the marathon last week.
You can't buy a smartphone as it will be out of date before you get it out of the shop and you can't buy a car as it will have halved in value the moment you put the key in the ignition.
Climate change scientists are not to be trusted as they are in the pay of the oil companies, meteorologists are not to be trusted as they never know what weather event will occur next and television presenters are not to be trusted, especially with your children. And priests are not to be trusted with...anyone.
You can't trust the Bilderburgers because they don't meet in secret for nothing and you can't trust your internet provider as they are reporting your every on-line move to the government, and you can't trust the government because they are compiling detailed files on us all to protect their own interests. Plus, you can't trust the government, any government, because they are engaged in pursuits so evil that they have to employ entire buildings full of people to keep their shenanigans secret but you can't trust the conspiracy theorists either, because they are all nuts, or is that just what they want you to believe?
You can not put your faith in money because the central banks are magic-ing billions out of thin air to prop up the house of cards they have built, and the more they invent fake money, the less your real money is worth. You can't trust gold as the price is being manipulated for the benefit of the banks, and you can't trust the banks because they will steal your money and use it to buy champagne, cocaine and lap dances. And you can't trust the ratings agencies to tell you about the health of your bank because they are paid by the banks to lie about that and you can't trust that the politicians will do the right thing because, well, where do I start?
All of the people and institutions that we have grown up to revere and admire and feel that we can place our trust in have been shown to be shams and charlatans and snakes in the grass. We have found that in life, we are utterly alone save for our close personal friends and family, many of whom we can't trust because they just want to get their hands on our money or our spouses or our garden implements, which they say they will return but never do.
You can't even trust charities because too many of them are more concerned with making their management's life more comfortable than the life of the people whose pictures adorn their collection tins.
So, who is there left? You can't trust your parents because look what they've done to you and you can't trust yourself because you know what you're like.
Perhaps it was always thus. Perhaps we are now only realising how untrustworthy everyone and everything is because, with the advance in communications technology, we are finding out much more about how the world really works. Maybe those halcyon days of certainty and faith and reliance on the goodness of others never really existed outside of our imaginings. Conceivably, the golden era when people and things were dependable only happened only in our minds.
Whatever the truth of that, you can be certain of this: the higher up the food chain they are, the less you can rely on them and things rarely do what they promise they will. Trust me.