Criminality

A few weeks ago Simon Jenkins had a piece in the Guardian about our collective mania for criminalising every thing in sight, with anything that a quorum doesn't like being fair game, and I commented on an aspect of this at reference 1.

So not impressed to read yesterday that the government is going to criminalise another tranche of smoking behaviour, to wit smoking in the presence of a child in a car. What is the matter with us? We are in the process of savage cuts to public services on the grounds that we cannot afford them any more, despite the modest growth being experienced in GDP, and at the same time we are extending the range of services that we are asking for from our hard pressed police forces.

More serious and more difficult, was the death, several years ago now, of a child in a hospital in Leicester. It seems that the resuscitation of this child was interrupted because it was mistakenly thought that he was the subject of a do not resuscitate order. The child was very ill and subsequently died. The other child, who really was the subject of the order, had, as it happened, been released. The CPS has now decided that no less than three people should be charged with negligence amounting to manslaughter. On the face of it this strikes me as very wrong: we are not going to help anything by attacking those in our health services who make mistakes, perhaps under pressures arising from all the cuts & reorganisations, with the blunt instrument of the criminal law. Such matters are better left to the hospital and professional authorities. One can only hope that the CPS know what they are doing and are not just giving in to pressures which they would do better to resist. Not enough information to make a considered judgement, but my hopes are not high.

But I dare say the management consultants will devise another batch of forms, which the staff at Leicester hospitals can use to while away any odd moments of leisure that they may have. Process rules the waves! Nothing that can't be fixed with a bit more process. (A proposition with which, I should add, I am in broad agreement. The trick is not to overcook it).

PS: I believe that most of said modest growth in GDP is finding its way into the pockets of those who already have plenty, rather than those of the rest of us. I did try to investigate GDP per head at national statistics (http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/index.html) but did not get very far. The concept clearly exists but I failed to translate into a useful spreadsheet. Maybe distribution of income & wealth is not something they put quality time & effort into.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/nonsense.html.