November 12, 2008

"There are weaknesses that exist," conceded Gordon Brown a few moments ago in the House of Commons, with massive understatement, in a debate about Haringey Social Services' utter failure to save the life of 17-month-old Baby P.

David Cameron - and more power to him for this - ripped him apart.

"Let's be honest," said Cameron. "This is about a... girl who had no idea how to bring up a child, it's about a boyfriend who couldn't read but could beat a child, it's about a social services department that gets £100m a year that can't look after children. That's what this is about."

He's right, too.

It is the exact same department that "learnt lessons" over Victoria Climbie so bloody well that despite making 60 visits to Baby P's home in just eight months, still has another child's horrific death on its hands.

I can picture it down there, too. Only too well.

Some jumped up nobody holding their hand out to journalists shrieking with all the requisite self-importance of the publicly-paid-and-pensioned that "that's all you're having; we've made our statement; there's nothing to see here; please move along" - like that means anything - and then trip-trapping back to their town hall lair for a furious game of Minesweeper.

Our country's town halls are absolutely stuffed with these superfluous, over-paid idiots.

In Haringey, the head of the department whose apparent failures led to the death of Baby P will be investigating her own department's apparent failures that led to the death of Baby P.

Yes, you read that correctly.

And a few doors down from her, an overpaid shrew with a clipboard will be working on a damage limitation exercise to make sure the council looks the least bad it possibly can, while a few miles away in a tower block another baby may be getting beaten to death.

Social workers have a hell of a job and I don't envy them for it. It's an often thankless task and cases like this cast a largely brilliant workforce in a terrible light.

But the management structures these people work under are now so Byzantine and indeed clandestine that the only people who ever take the rap when something does go wrong are the poor saps on the front line carrying out orders.

I ask you: If you were in charge of your local council - bearing in mind how much you pay in council tax - would you sooner employ another social worker, or employ someone to slickly tell you how superbly well social workers are working?

Likewise, would you sooner employ another lollipop lady to get your child across the road on a winter's morning, or instead pay someone to brightly tell you how darn well your council is doing on road safety?

And again: Would you rather employ someone to sweep the bloody streets, or alternatively use that council tax of yours on someone to tell you how absolutely bloody great your council is at recycling?

No brainers, eh?

But that's the UK in 2008. That is what we have got.

Town halls full to bursting with pen-pushers who don't empty bins, don't save kids, don't fix potholes, and more than anything else, almost as if their transparently thin non-jobs absolutely depend on it, don't ever, ever say sorry.