When to blow a whistle.

When would you blow the whistle? I once met David Shayler but never asked him when he was moved him to pass secret documents to the Mail on Sunday. I had it in the back of my mind that the prime mover may have been finance which does take some of the gloss off an honourable quest for truth. However money is important if you don't want to live in squalor.

I was talking about whistleblowing today with a couple of people. One thought that whistles should be blown at the first opportunity, but when I explained that whistleblowing involved telling someone outside the organisation she told me she felt that if something was going wrong then something (within the organisation) should be done immediately. Having looked it up there is a definition of internal whistleblowing which covers this scenario but to me this is just following normal procedure.

There is a local report about how medical records are kept (see the blog from 3rd Feb) and it looks like something is being done only because of a whistleblower. Take MPs expenses. We need whistleblowers. I happen to think David Shayler was right. Whistles need to be blown but wouldn't it be nice if this were not the case.

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