Nasty, ugly, and telling us what to do

Nasty, ugly, and despicable

We seldom watch anything much together, BLISS, DLL and me. Me and BLISS watch The Sopranos when we get the chance and when we remember (look, in contractual terms, we're in overrun, having missed our completion date, and have applied for multiple extensions of time – work is (albeit slowly) in progress). [The Sopranos was available on Catch Up TV, it is now available on Jesus H Friggin' Christ, Where've You Been for the Last Fifteen Years? TV]. Me and DLL watch The Walking Dead.

Just not my thing, really, telly.

For some reason, we watched the documentary into the lead-up to, and the fallout from the Baby P torture and murder case.

All the major points hit home: the absolute horror at the ordeal of a short life that child suffered; incomprehension (but not surprise or shock) that people can be so fatally damaged and flawed as to those things; the mistakes by the social services, the police, the medical teams, all charged with looking after the welfare of vulnerable children.

It also left dismay:

At the way the media were manipulated into, and couldn't wait to give the easy target some cheap shots and then a good kicking.

Then, after further reflection, dismay that there's no dissenting voice among the broadcasters or the newspapers. Not one journalist with enough brains or balls to move away from the sheep and propose a different point of view. Telly, radio, newspapers all mobilised against the social workers and one lone under trained and exposed doctor. The politicians and the police used their powerful connections and spin teams to stay in the clear. Absurd that the police escaped criticism for not dealing with the criminal acts that should be their core operational concern.

Absolute dismay watching Cameron at the dispatch box, taking his own cheap shots, benefiting from the cruel and unusual death of a child; absolute dismay that Ed Balls, after clearly having manipulated, politicised and mishandled the situation then happily (he was almost giving in to a smug grin impulse during one interview when he thought he'd scored some points and come out squeaky clean) hung people out to dry. If either had an ounce of moral fibre they'd've stood down after watching their performances.

It's the lack of that dissenting voice that's the scariest thing of all. Without even one expression of an alternative point of view, nothing will ever change. Nothing can ever change. The politicians at the top are in power under the systems currently operating and therefore have selfish vested interest in maintaining those systems. Those systems that have failed the vulnerable for years. The police, the civil service, and the media who feed on the circus have their own futures bound up in that maintenance of the status quo. So no-one stands up and asks, or sits down and types the awkward questions or the unwanted truths. The minister responsible, pleased as punch with his get out of jail free card, gleefully announced that he had no idea that OfSTED destroyed their records three or six months after publishing their inspection reports. He's paid for running that department, he showed not a scrap of embarrassment at his unfamiliarity with its workings. Towards the end one man spoke up. Why had the social workers (generally) and one individual doctor (despite the broken back she apparently missed actually happening after her examination) been vilified in the press and the media, while the police and the government departments had escaped criticism? Not as in less, but as in nothing to speak of?