Lessons haven't been learned. Evidently.

Newsnight

Just saw Mr. Balls in the kind of challenging interview that only BBC Breakfast News can provide, which might have gone out to an audience of a few more than anything covered by Newsnight.

'Lessons have been learned' over night, obviously, and the main 'defensive offense' now seems to be to nit-pick on minor matters, such as a protagonist's actual age or whether this was the 'best time' to raise a matter of national interest and concern. If an adult, and even if not 'legally', I'm not too clear how that relates very much to the main issue at hand, namely the death of an infant overseen by an entity that patently did not learn any lessons after the last one and, other than providing a mechanism to ensure no one is held to account... again... seems unlikely to prevent another.

A point rather made on SKY just now by some grey, suited committee member more concerned by Mr. Cameron's behaviour than anything perhaps more pressing. His reaction to the fact that this latest outrage was committed on the same council's watch, under the same government of the last decade:...' 'but that was 8 years ago, and we're looking into it'.

But if the powers that be and media bubble cheerleaders think them obsessing on semantics and insisting 'they' be left to discuss away unchallenged, endlessly, is the best way to dig out of a deep hole, go for it!

Lessons patently have not, and are not being learned, and weasel words are no longer enough, save to protect the pay and pensions of the clearly incompetent and self-serving at the expense of those they are in theory in place to protect.

It's not a playground, but school needs to be out and a new term needs to bring those who serve the public and not their own and other's petty careers. From where I don't know, but if it's clearly broke it's obvious something fresh is needed to try and fix it.

A useful added post..

I have made no study of UK governance but bits have come my way. From these, I draw the conclusion that Westminster is a game, played by an odious distillation of individuals whose commonality is acceptance of unpleasantness that is not tolerated in normal (advisedly) society.
They have PMQs presided over by 'Mr Speaker' who says: failure to answer is none of his business. There are professional bullies (the whips) whose activities are, presumably, lawful because Westminster is 'outside the law'. The code of conduct for MPs (qv) is predictably insulting to the misguided dupes who still vote for these ciphers. All MPs practice, overtly and without shame, the maddening 'non-answer' to questions of every sort, and a slavish partisanship (and leader sycophancy) beyond anything found among normal people.
In short, Westminster is like some antechamber of Dante's Inferno. Is it any wonder that such governance has given us War on an abstract noun and magical disappearing money - to name but two?

My appeal to a 'monarch with a voice', above, was because that was the only person, (quasi) senior to Parliament, I could think of who might call "ENOUGH!"

Worth recalling when various Westminster insiders and their Village Useful Idiots in the media glee clubs try one of their frequent "Why are the people so disengaged with politics (like we really care so long as the '5p' power/pay/perks/punditry/pension gravy train still runs)" faux breast-beating exercises.

Gaurdian - An impossible target

Telegraph - Baby P row: Labour's new attack on David Cameron

Telegraph - If you can't make a party political issue out of Baby P, what's the point of democracy?

Telegraph - National database will not stop deaths like Baby P

I rather hope that most of the country noticed, and treated with all the respect it deserves, that particularly odious NewLab and crony 'stay in gravy free' utterance.

If 8 years is insufficient to learn a lesson then 'education x 3' has worked as well for those who uttered that facile chant from within Westminster as those outside who it has failed to empower since.

And what is this lesson, and how the heck is a national database of children going to make a darn bit of difference to it, save adding more pay/perks/pension footsoldiers to the self-serving voter bloc, and a ton more conflicting empires and individuals running around dodgy databases to get in the way of common sense.

The lunatics have been in charge of the asylum too long, been given the keys to filing cabinet, found the medicinal alcohol and inspired by swallowing that, along with each other's reports and data, have decided that doing it all on a PC will make all well.

Anything to avoid getting out there, seeing what's what, and being held accountable for the responsibility they seem to crave.

Next I'll have a Minister on the Beeb telling me 'what the public is telling them what they want... and that's to get on with the job.'