Slap on the wrist... compo!

Baby P social workers retain pay, perks and pensions

I call it the '5p' (power/pay/perks/punditry/pension) gravy train (7 if you add 'partisan protection' in the case of a major ranks closing).

And I don't give a flying fig what happens in the private sector; I am not paying for it. Or, if I am, I'll set about correcting it, with some chance of it happening.

I'm suprised they aren't going for compo due to 'hurt feelings' for this figurative wrist slap.

Gaurdian - Our empty outrage over Baby P As we behead the culprits at Haringey council, do we stop to consider who will replace them?

I rather hope so. And this time ensure they do a competent job.

Failing which, maybe it would be time to look at those who hire the managers.

CEOs - 1 Kids - 0

Baby P 'could have ended up a parasite'

I suppose he 'could'. We'll never know, will we?

This Barnado's 'CEO' has not been off the airwaves lately.

And when he's not there are TV ads that are as incomprehensible as they are misguided.

'Provoking anger' can be effective at times, but this is purely at the altar of awareness and I wonder how much is to fill executive pay requirements and how much to help kids. Of course, ratings-hungry media are more than happy to be complicit. Thing is, 'could' is really not news, is it? Or maybe I 'could' say, 'should it be?"

Not a penny of my money will go to this charity's way whilst such a regime and mindset is in place.

Was this the reaction they sought?

I'm sure that when he has finished dealing with the main issues at hand in his busy schedule, such as writing to X Factor losers, Gordon 'I think I speak for the world..' Brown (love the pic) will be available to comment? Unless Strictly Come Dancing tears him away to another BBC studio.

Newsnight -

Ladders and Ladders

I have watched a new twist to the Baby P saga unfold.

It is silly to imagine mistakes will not happen, but there seems to be a slight disconnect between how mistakes are handled in the real world (hence I exclude the City and most major corporations) and wherever it is that the BBC and those it invites on to witter away inhabit.

In the case of Baby P we seem to have series of folk participating, some through being plain useless, some from being spineless, but most through being careerist drones, in the death of a child. It happened before, lessons were not learned, it has happened again, no one has been held to proper account... and so it will keep on happening.

I have lost count of the number of times I got fired in the advertising world for telling a client he was a prat or missing a line of copy when proof reading. Fine, I wouldn't want to work where I was not wanted, and ended up with my own agency. And if it was all falling around me I usually was smart enough to bail first. Rule 1: if you can't do a good job and know it (for whatever reason, even if nothing to do with you), don't try. It will go wrong and you will carry the can. Unless in the public sector, where it will go wrong, people may suffer, taxpayer money will be lost (and 'found' mysteriously to pay off whatever or whoever needs to be) but no one will be held to account, lose pay or status, much less their jobs. At least not without an eyewatering bribe from the public purse to spare those who surrounded them and will remain's blushes. Witness the harridan in the NHS who oversaw old folk left in soiled beds.

Now I have a Local Gov exec, who seems to have spent a long time at the hairdressers in advance of her day in the spotlights, giving us the 'only' 'alternative', namely the goon squad knocking down doors because our Tracey lobbed up at school with a grazed knee.

This is also an outrageous cock-up, and those who cover their backsides to ensure no deaths on their watch in this manner, arealso a waste of space.

Life is cruel, and seldom clear cut. So there will be lots of grey areas. In these cases I have every sympathy for those making tough calls and will always defer to innocent until proven...

However, what the government and BBC are presenting me with is an either/or that is based on cases which simply have no justifications, yet many still seem to think they do.

If you have clearly blown it, and blown it a lot, maybe you are in the wrong job. I think a few dead kids and a few unjustly abused/accused parents might think a wee purge of the 'job security at any cost' system that currently prevails might agree.

Gaurdian - Most tabloid hysteria is fake. The Baby P coverage is ghastly because it manipulates genuine outrage - He just had to be named Julian

Telegraph - Baby P case and Hazel Blears prove that when leadership fails, the messenger is shot

BBC - Official sacked over Baby P case

Gaurdian - Misguided vengeance - Interesting chocie of words there.

Those who seek to detect them need support

No issue with that at all.

not the sack

Well, as we are getting to the highest echelons (for once), I say that it's hard to equate the first part of that sentence with the last.

And if you wish to prevent something happening again, especially through rampant numptitude, it's a nifty way to replace those with less than sterling histories of performance, hopefully with some better able, and also focus the minds of those who remain on what might be the most important aspect of their job functions.

Priorities

Ours is an interesting country, as least as far as the politico-media establishment goes.

Two vastly-paid blokes abuse just about everything and everyone possible, and after a while get suspended on full pay, while the liberal luvvies of London anguish over the fairness of it all still.

Meanwhile a woman 'blows a whistle' about a mammoth systems failure in childcare, and is sacked within days and then has a gagging order slapped on just for good measure, to protect... er...?

I guess it matters who you work for, and in what cause.

Lessons are being learned, apparently. I just hope it's by the public, and they will be able to give their verdicts in an appropriate manner at the right time. Though, for some, tomorrow would be too late.

Newsnight

Telegraph - Baby P was a victim of the quango state

Indy - Too many cooks

Gaurdian - Gordon Brown remains on top form in New York

Gaurdian - Where does the buck stop in Baby P case?

As the step-springed, sparkly-mooded, awesomely-adorned Mr. Brown bestrides the world stage in other pages here...

The only use of the word 'buck' needed here is tied to 'up', though I remain unsure whether the first letter of the first word is yet quite right

The author has posted an odd distraction by way of justification for the chatterati defence..

'Our first step towards understanding the death of this child should be not to blame social workers but to face the mother's experience of childhood...
Rather than dwelling on the horror, we should try to learn from the killing of Baby P'

I fear I then stopped reading this 'terrific piece', because I was getting my head round any number of crimes that may yet be committed, which I may be in a position to prevent and/or call upon paid professionals to resolve, but which instead I should sit back and observe dispassionately to first fully understand where the perp's coming from such that lessons may be learned.

As opposed to moving asap to stop it happening now, or again.

Which may, to the frustration of some posters, suggest getting back to those persons and systems and persons who make systems that failed before, failed this time and, without some kind of adequate response will fail again.

Hope pondering the dark side of humanity doesn't put a dampener on the Islington dinner parties ce soir. Or give pause to wonder how many other innocents may suffer (and never enjoy a nice Chablis) whilst good men... and women... engage in endless debate.

Gaurdian - This frenzy of hatred is a disaster for children at risk

I agree, if you mean the immediate, knee jerk frenzy of one media extreme (a sorry Guardian default these days) and its supporters against another, without actually addressing sensibly the problem of how protect at risk children now and in the future.

The tabloids are a fact of life, unfortunately. And equally at fault in using this, latest, situation to do the only thing their ratings require, namely stir up the mob.

However, two wrongs do not make a right, and getting distracted by, or using their behaviour as a distraction from the core issue, is disingenuous at best.

Ms. Toynbee, you are, lord knows why, in a position of power, if only through the influence and reach of these pages.

I can only thank heavens that you have no direct responsibility over the future of my children's generation if the immediate reaction to a catastrophic failure is to dive off and seek out those not helping the cause of sweeping the actions of those who have failed under the carpet.

Sadly, this role is still being ably carried out as we speak from Ed Balls up... and down... as more fingers point at ever more stats like a stat makes a damn bit of difference to a dead child.

As with any job, there are good workers and not good ones. In my line of work the not good ones usually don't progress too far and/or end up in other employment. And the worse that happens if they remain is profits are lower.

It would appear that across public service different systems, and standards, apply (well, other than internally in top level where you can bully scores of staff out of your departments at whim for not bearing a 'team player' with a single shriek or lob of a mobile phone. Naomi Campbell should go for high office), but the consequences can be more severe, and enduring, if not allowed to be resolved.

It seems a simple, inconvenient fact that, under the same council regime, under the same government of all the talents, with all the same, lame defences I read here, it took but 8 years for no more lessons to be learned than I believe will be this time, as the backside-coverers and excuse makers scamper about the print media and airwaves cited 'successfully-followed' procedures.

The system is failing, if not an ex-system. It needs changing. Deal with it.

Telegraph - Parents should be allowed to smack without ending up in a police cell

Telegraph - Ofsted points out failures - but too late for Baby P - What does that Of- prefix stand for? Obfuscate?

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.'