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<\/a>[ luck ]\/Paul V\/Flickr<\/p><\/div>No one said life was fair, and we can all point to examples of people who have either ended up with more than one would consider a fair dose of troubles, and others who, frankly, glide through life with silver spoons showering all round them.<\/p>\n
We tend to favour the term \u2018lucky\u2019 or \u2018unlucky\u2019 to describe such individuals, mainly, probably, to keep our thoughts about these apparent injustices and our personal opinions safe, secular and uncontentious.\u00a0 Unlike, of course, Roy Moore, a prospective Senator in the US who eplained the mass shooting of children in Sandy Hook in 2013 as \u2018a punishment for forgetting God\u2019 \u2013 a view which really does, in my view, take the concept of original sin to an all-time low.<\/p>\n
So there are the events which befall us over which we apparently have no control, and then there are the times when we invite fate by taking a risk, and then getting away with it. Every one of us has done this, and we can all point to occasions in our lives when somehow the unseen powers-that-be were kindly looking in the other direction and we were off the hook.<\/p>\n
I can think of many examples from my teenage years: once a group of us was caught \u2018out of bounds\u2019 hanging out at break in the empty junior school playground, where we had no business to be. We were sent back by a prefect to the correct part of school, but, wonder of wonders, she had turned up just after we had stubbed out the shared cigarette someone had brought in. So we got away with it.<\/p>\n
How many times was I the one who was messing about in class yet managed to produce a decent piece of work while another poor bod who had listened intently got marked down for poor spelling or something?<\/p>\n
Mind you, my childhood lucky breaks pale into insignificance in comparison with the YouTube clip I came across of a bunch of kids in a US Wal-Mart. They filmed themselves skateboarding around the store – and getting away with it.<\/p>\n
Yet once we finally grow up and begin to understand the real consequences of our own and other people\u2019s actions it gets a lot more tricky. Most of us have driven faster than the speed limit, or driven with one extra glass of wine on board. Most of us have facilitated a bit of tax dodging by paying someone in cash. Conversely, how many times have we dutifully bought a train ticket, not had it inspected and allowed our lower self to momentarily wish we hadn\u2019t bothered, before feeling self-righteous and pleased we had \u2018done the right thing\u2019.<\/p>\n
Two years ago I was a juror on a complex ten-week fraud trial involving eight defendants.\u00a0 At the end we had to decide, beyond reasonable doubt, on the guilt or innocence of each of the defendants. We found one of them not guilty, not because we didn\u2019t think she’d done it, but because there wasn’t sufficient evidence in her particular case. She burst into tears as I read out the verdict \u2013 but I will never know what, if anything, she got away with.<\/p>\n
One of the most extraordinary examples of getting away with it, yet with perhaps more dire consequences than anything I have seen in my lifetime, was the sight of David Cameron, on 24 June 2016, the day after losing the Referendum on Britain\u2019s future membership of the European Union. \u00a0Standing in front of No. 10 Downing Street he announced his resignation as Prime Minister and then turned round and walked back into his residence, happily and insouciantly humming a tune to himself, as if there was nothing on his mind other than what he was going to have for lunch. If you can bear to watch this, here it is:<\/p>\n