Prem Sikka is using his Guardian blog to great effect. His latests is called 'Their hands in our pockets' and shows just how often big business abuses the market system for its own benefit.

As Dennis Howlett said in his review of this blog:

Prem Sikka's indictment of Tesco, Asda, Morrisons, Safeway and Sainsbury's as a cartel operating to fix prices of basic foodstuffs is the sharpest critique I've seen of the UK's enterprise culture.

He particularly referred to this comment:

Increasing profits through tax avoidance, pension mis-selling, dilution of workers' pension rights or through cartels has become part of an "enterprise" culture that persuades many to believe that bending the rules for personal gain is a sign of business acumen. Stealing a march on a competitor, at almost any price, to gain financial advantage is considered to be an entrepreneurial skill, especially where competitive pressures link promotion, status, profits, market shares and niches with meeting business targets…

The vicious enterprise culture is rarely constrained by any notion of ethics and morality.

All I can say is read it. But then ask this question. Why isn't Prem Sikka the man in most demand to be a non-executive director in the UK today? He's the best track record in the UK of asking awkward questions of business on which it has transpired that he has been right. But as As Ruth Sutherland says in the Observer today (and I paraphrase a bit):

Non-executives have been likened to bidets: they add a touch of class but no-one knows what they are for. They are well-rewarded by most standards, earning in the region of £30,000-£60,000 for attending board meetings 12 or so days a year. Most have demanding full-time jobs, families, charity interests and often a portfolio of other roles, so there are limits to the detailed scrutiny they will provide.

What they should do, though, is ask the right questions. No one, however, seems to have made the simple inquiry as to why a modest mortgage bank in Newcastle upon Tyne was playing at the casino end of the capital markets.

Being a non-executive director is not the sinecure it once was. But despite genuine improvements deep-seated problems remain.

One is the sheer shortage of top talent; astute non-executives are in huge demand and may sit at a number of mahogany tables. The pool of people from which non-executives are drawn is relatively small; more effort needs to be made to recruit robust candidates from outside the cosy City club, or its Geordie branch.

That's just not true. Such people do exist. Prem is one of them. But the fact is that the executive directors don't wan the awkward squad questioning them. When will investors realise that it is in their best interests that they do? Soon I hope.