Misplaced Trust
Why do we continue to place our faith in people, organisations, and institutions that have proved they don’t deserve it.
Maybe it’s just human nature. Maybe we’re hardwired to believe that someone, somewhere, knows what they’re doing. We put our faith in people and institutions: governments; federations; regulators; police, not because they’ve earned it, but because that’s what we have always done. And because the alternative is too bloody depressing. Because the thought that no one’s actually steering the ship is just too terrifying to contemplate.
But every now and again, reality comes along to remind us that the people at the helm might not know their port from their starboard.
It was surely reasonable to expect that the self-appointed “voice of the demolition industry” - the National Federation of Demolition Contractors - would step up when ten of its member companies were caught up in the Competition and Markets Authority’s bid-rigging scandal. Ten. Not one rogue firm. Not a handful of bad apples. Ten. That’s not a blip; that’s a bloody pattern.
You’d think, wouldn’t you, that the Federation might have said something decisive. A statement. Some suspensions. A bit of moral backbone. Something to reassure the market; to prove that integrity still meant something.
Instead, silence. Not the kind of silence that precedes meaningful change. The deafening, avoidant kind that screams: “If we keep our heads down, everyone might forget about this.”
Then came the removal of the red diesel rebate. Another moment when the Federation could’ve used its so-called influence for good. Construction and demolition firms were already struggling under rising costs, and this was a direct hit on the little guys.
What did we get? Another shrug.
When the environmental lobby, backed by politicians keen to look green without understanding a damn thing, started painting demolition as the enemy of sustainability, you might’ve expected some kind of fightback. Maybe an explanation that demolition isn’t just about tearing things down but about clearing the way for safer, more efficient structures. That recycling and reuse aren’t new concepts for this industry; they’ve been baked into the work for decades.
Instead, silence again. Deafening, convenient, cowardly silence.
And it was the same when NFDC members suffered a spate of scaffold collapses in the summer of 2019. Same again a few weeks ago when another member company saw a collapse in Manchester city centre.
You start to wonder. Why do we continue to hand over our trust like it’s an endless resource, when all the evidence says it’s being squandered?
Take the UK government. You’d like to think they’d spend public money wisely. You’d like to think there’s a bit of due diligence involved before billions are signed off. But no. £2.7 billion of taxpayers’ money has been poured into infrastructure projects that now sit abandoned, half-finished, or permanently shelved.
Then there’s the housing pledge. 1.5 million new homes by the end of the decade. It sounded good in a headline. It sounded ambitious. Decisive. But anyone with half an understanding of planning bottlenecks, skills shortages, and supply chain chaos could tell you this wasn’t even fantasy. It was fiction.
And still, we nod along. We hope this time they’ve done the maths. We want to believe.
Perhaps that’s the real tragedy of all this. It’s not just that those in power fail us; it’s that we keep lining up for another round of disappointment. Like gamblers who’ve lost everything but can’t resist one more spin, one more hand, one more “maybe this time.”
The demolition industry has its own heartbreak in this regard. The Didcot Disaster.
The police took primacy in the investigation which, on the face of it, sounded like a good thing. Serious incident, criminal potential. Let the experts handle it.
Except they weren’t experts. Not in structural engineering, not in demolition methodology, not in the realities of complex, ageing industrial buildings. And almost 10 years later, what do we have? No prosecutions. No accountability. No closure for the families. Just a series of polite letters, vague updates, and the hollow reassurance that “the investigation is ongoing.”
If you listen carefully, you can almost hear the sound of justice dying of old age.
So here we are again, waiting. Waiting for someone in authority to do what they promised. Waiting for systems that have failed us time and time again to suddenly come good.
It’s not even confined to demolition or construction. You see it in politics, in policing, in public health, in corporate life. Bankers crash the economy, get bailed out, and we trust them again. Governments lie, bluster, U-turn, and we still turn up at the ballot box hoping this time might be different. The police mishandle major cases, suppress evidence, lose documents, and still we’re told they’re “learning lessons.”
We seem to be a nation addicted to disappointment.
Maybe it’s cultural. Maybe it’s baked into the British psyche; that stiff-upper-lip, mustn’t-grumble attitude that lets authority off the hook. We tut, we roll our eyes, we mutter into our mugs of tea.
It’s like we’re stuck in an abusive relationship with our institutions. They let us down, we forgive them. They lie to us, we rationalise it. They disappear when we need them most, and we still cling to the hope that maybe next time they’ll show up.
But they never do.
The demolition sector’s relationship with its Federation is just one small version of a much bigger pattern. The NFDC should be a genuine force for good: a professional, transparent, authoritative voice. Instead, it’s become an echo chamber, more interested in protecting its own reputation than fighting the corner for the industry it claims to represent.
The government could have been a strategic partner to the construction sector; providing clarity, investment, and consistency. Instead, we get stop-start policies, political gimmicks, and grand promises that dissolve faster than a sugar cube in tea.
Maybe it’s time to start rebuilding our trust differently. Not top-down - not blind faith in badges, logos, or titles - but from the ground up. Trust earned in actions, not statements. In delivery, not delay.
And that’s the point. Trust is earned; it’s a kind of currency. And we’ve spent too long investing that currency in the wrong markets.
