RESPONSIBILITY is a quality distinctly lacking from modern life.

Whether it’s a signally disastrous Home Secretary, a disgraced social services manager, a leading football manager, MPs who have been living an opulent lifestyle at the taxpayers’ expense, the family of the young man who crashed the US security system while looking for UFOs, or those who commit serious crimes, sorry really does appear to be the easiest, hollowest word.

There are so many examples in public life of people who just don’t get it when it comes to accepting their responsibility when things go awry or they act improperly. Jacqui Smith, the former Home Secretary, is sorry, but not really, for wrongly claiming £116,000 in second home allowances. Oh, and the odd porn movie watched by her husband. If what she said in Parliament this week was an apology, then it was a graceless one. Rather more a list of excuses than genuine contrition.

Sharon Shoesmith, who headed Haringey’s social services — I use the word “services” advisedly in this instance — at the time of the Baby P outrage, is another who thinks she has been badly treated in losing her job. I don’t note much acceptance of responsibility or contrition there either.

Even Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson, of whom I wrote last week, was hardly humble in withdrawing some of his barbed complaints about the fitness of referee Alan Wiley once the technical evidence pointed to him being wrong.

Aren’t there times when you just wish people who get it wrong would simply hold up their hands and admit it, rather than wriggling through carefully worded statements designed to say a sort of sorry without genuinely meaning it or dispense their mealy-mouthed excuses?

Any watered down admission is usually followed by a bout of pathetic self-justification. I heard one MP trying to explain on the radio this week why he had claimed a new razor on his expenses. Well, the old one blew up and it seemed perfectly reasonable to claim back the cost of its replacement. I imagine there are few Herald readers whose employers generously cough up their gardening and cleaning bills, let alone finance the equipment they use in their morning ablutions.

Sadly, decent, hard working Members of Parliament, who I happen to believe are still in the majority, are being tarred with the same brush as their less upright colleagues. And as Parliament reassembled this week, the major issues of the nation — war in Afghanistan and the colossal debt situation — didn’t get a mention as once more the talk was all about duck houses, cleaning ladies and wretched electric razors.

By this time next year, hopefully, voters will have swept out many of the rogues and cheats and Parliament will be a cleaner place. At least that’s the hope. The current atmosphere of public mistrust in politicians is very bad for democracy. While our political leaders continue with their failure to accept responsibility for their actions, what chance is there of people in other walks of life believing they should either?

HOW BILLY HANDLED THE MIGHTY UNITED

PROFESSIONAL football has never been as remote from the game’s grass roots as it is today. In 1923, when Keswick Football Club opened their new ground at Walker Park, Manchester United provided the opposition for a Cumberland select XI and a record 3,000 locals turned up to watch.

When Keswick play their first game on their new pitch next to the town’s hospital in a year’s time, I doubt that Messrs. Rooney, Ferdinand and Giggs will be there to grace the occasion. Unless you have 60 quid to lavish on a seat and enjoy prawn sandwiches, most Premiership clubs don’t want to know you or hear about the trials and tribulations of their lesser cousins.

This week I had the pleasure of looking round Keswick Football Club’s splendid new clubhouse, which is to be officially opened next Saturday. Much as Walker Park has history on its side, this is going to be football in an unrivalled setting, with the most admirable facilities to match, and a thriving junior section.

When Man United came calling in 1923, the Cumberland line-up included two locals, Shaw of Keswick and Mills of Threlkeld. In those days footballers, even those at the top of the tree had their feet on the ground and could relate to the ordinary working bloke. But it still must have been a huge thrill for Cumberland’s men to take on the United and only lose 4-2.

Billy Shaw played so magnificently in goal that, by all accounts, United wanted to take him back with them and sign him on. The Herald report noted: “The feature of the game was the great saving in goal by Shaw, Cumberland’s custodian.” In latter years Bill, a delightful chap, was better known for his prowess in character roles on the local stage where he often saved the day for am-dram and light operatic shows.

BOMBER IS NO HERO

BRIGHTON bomber Patrick Magee, who was in Cumbria just last year speaking about his work as an agent of peace, is feted by Parliamentarians these days and takes the stage alongside the daughter of one of his victims from 25 years ago.

Magee, remember, tried to bring down the British Government and murder the Prime Minister and her Cabinet. He has no remorse or regrets; has never sought forgiveness. He equates blowing up innocent civilians with the British Army’s current role in Afghanistan.

There is a time to forgive and forget, as Basil Fawlty reminded the Major when the Germans came to stay. But not to parade a killer as some sort of hero of the peace process. Presumably Mr. Magee thinks that those who blew shoppers to smithereens in Omagh, those who killed schoolboy Tim Parry on a Saturday shopping trip in Warrington, and all the other bomb outrages were acts of heroism or, as he says of his Brighton bombing that killed five people and crippled Margaret Tebbit for life, were carried out “in full conscience”.

Reconciliation means talking to people we would otherwise deplore and shrink from. But Magee still enjoys parading his vicious past in the pretence of making peace and should not be encouraged in his grotesque role by people who are well meaning, but ill of judgement.

NOT DOING DRUGS!

IN typically droll style, the incomparable Clement Freud, late writer, gambler, politician and dog meat advertiser, opined that once one was “on the crematorium side” of 60, the phrase “getting lucky” meant remembering where you had left your vehicle on the car park and being able to find it again.

A little while ago a police officer told me about two elderly ladies who appeared at the door of his Lake District station in a distressed state, claiming that their car had been stolen. It’s a town with car parks on either side of its main street. They had parked on one side and spent an hour vainly searching the other side. Once everyone had gone home, only one vehicle remained. It was, of course, theirs.

As Freud noted, we do err towards eccentricity once in the grip of the advancing years. Which may explain the odd looks I was given recently on a shopping trip into town. It was only when I got home and looked in the mirror I spotted a white powdery substance below my left nostril. Friends obviously worried that I had belatedly taken to snorting cocaine. In reality it was the previous day’s shaving foam, dried on and somehow missed during a cursory face wash..