The Sun gets it right
The comments posted by many of those who responded to my blog yesterday were heartfelt and thought-provoking – demonstrating the wide-spread dismay caused by the torture and death of Baby P. Paul, however, disagreed with my argument that Haringey Council and other agencies involved in child protection should be held responsible at this early stage, even before Lord Laming’s inquiry has reported.
This view has got some traction in the media, part of a broader tendency on the progressive side of the fence to view media storms with suspicion. Peter Wilby, for instance, is a normally shrewd observer of the worst excesses of Daily Mail journalism. In his latest guardian piece Wilby tries for balance, placing at least some of the blame for the current controversy with: “the tendency of rightwing newspapers to assume social work and socialism (along with sociology) are the same sort of thing, and that the profession’s very existence contributes to “the dependency culture”.
I understand this point of view, and those of Paul in the comments to my previous post, and those of others like them want to let the review take its course. But I disagree with them, profoundly, at least in part because I, too, was once put in the care of social services….
Continue reading ‘Baby P: For once, the “reasonable” voices are wrong’
A furore certain to run and run
Judging by today’s papers, there’s little chance that the furore about the death of Baby P is going to go away any time soon—it’s already expanding well beyond the facts of the case into a full-blown controversy on the state of society, the media and politics.
Before we all add our voices to the growing political row, however, we should remember one single fact. A vulnerable child, just 17 months old, died. Instead of being lavished with love and taken on all those outings that trigger healthy child development, Baby P had his ribs broken and his back broken. He was bruised, battered and lacerated, possibly by a dog. Some of his nails were missing and one of his front teeth had been knocked out. The child’s mother and two men have been found guilty of allowing or causing his death on 3rd August last year. They await sentencing and the government has set up an inquiry, led by Lord Laming, into his death.
Baby P had been the subject of a police investigation into child abuse, which was dropped the day before he was found dead. This had been triggered by visits to his doctor, in autumn 2006, when his bruises could not be explained. He was referred to paediatricians at the Whittington, who said that the marks suggested non-accidental injury. He was put on the child protection register in Haringey and was released into the care of a friend of his mother. At the end of January 2007, before the police investigation had concluded, he was returned home.
Continue reading ‘Why Baby P died’
On 1st February this year, two “suicide” bombers exploded material in two outdoor pet markets in Baghdad, Iraq, killing nearly 100 people.
A senior Iraqi military official claimed shortly afterwards that the two women had Down’s Syndrome and that their vests were detonated by remote control. Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of US forces in Baghdad, showed photographs of the alleged bombers to a small number of journalists and commented: “These two women were likely used because they didn’t understand what was happening and were less likely to be searched”. One journalist who was at the press conference, Larry Kaplow, of Newsweek, described the photographs thus: “They looked like they could have been sisters—young women, with the same brown tint to their straight hair, round, smooth cheeks. Both were decapitated just under the chin, but their faces were eerily intact, almost serene… And, according to Iraqi officials, both women had Down’s Syndrome. The theory is that they were tricked into carrying the explosives.” Condoleeza Rice, US secretary of state commented that such a use of disabled people demonstrated the “absolute bankruptcy and brutality of the enemy of the people of Iraq.”
But some sources are now concerned about the story. Indeed, Larry Kaplow, when I contacted him to ask whether he was sure that the alleged bombers were disabled, said: “Some characteristics were there but not conclusive proof.” And a spokeswoman for the Multi-national Forces press desk in Baghdad said only, when questioned further, that “initial medical reports indicate that the women appeared to be disabled.” Bob Lamburne, director for forensic services in Baghdad for the British Embassy, goes further. He says that suggesting that the two bombers had Down’s Syndrome from photographs was “dangerous” and that the “diagnosis would have to be more scientific than that.” Another journalist, Stephen Farrell of the New York Times, says that there are plenty of reasons to doubt the assertion and has noted that “Iraqi officials have made similar claims in the past.”
Continue reading ‘Disabled people—a new weapon of war?’
Channel 4 went big on Britz, describing it as must-see, water-cooler television for the post-7/7 generation. I was happy to give up four hours to see anything that Peter Kosminsky had written and directed. The Government Inspector, his thoughtful, sparse telling of the death of David Kelly was one of the highlights of 2005.
But I was disappointed by Britz—on three levels. Continue reading ‘The failure of Britz (2)’
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