There’s always someone to blame

This is more than a silly season, we now have legal systems around the world that ensure that, you can find an individual responsible for any

– accident,
– collective failure of society,
– micro-organism, or
– act of nature/God/whatever.

Once you have you have a good lawyer (you also need some money or the status as a superior victim) you can make sure the b*stards never work again, fine them enormous amounts or even jail them. That sure makes you feel better about that sudden death/earthquake/abuse now doesn’t it?

I won’t bore you with the full details but if the stories below don’t make you go “mmmm”, further details can all be found on the BBC website.

This is yesterday’s news. One day. Just one day.

– 6 scientists and a government official jailed for correctly reassuring a town in Italy that the statistical chance of a major earthquake in the next few days was low. (Off course there was then an earthquake in the next few days. Michael Fish will now be sued for his “hurricane” prediction in the 80s).
– the UN could be bankrupted by a case brought against them because it seems likely that the strain of cholera that killed thousands was brought there by a Nepalese soldier sent to help. (Will we know sue Hong Kong for bird flu or the native americans sue us for syphilis? How does the UN go about supporting war and disaster zones now?)
– we are seriously investigating more than 1400 policemen over the Hillsborough disaster. (We need to learn lessons but so how much more time and money are we going to spend just to ensure that we ruin even more people’s lives? Yes, investigate, but do it quickly and concentrate on learning the lessons, rather than making sure we jailing the most people possible.)
– Editor of Newsnight steps aside because he (like the Crown Prosecution Service before him) was concerned about the standard of evidence against Jimmy Savile, and he didn’t have enough evidence to criticise the CPS as opposed to just outing Saville. His staff then saved their necks on TV by saying they disagreed. (What about the CPS, Savile’s neighbours, family, the guy who met him in the park and Dave from the chip shop? They must have known something. Let’s have them too.)

You can quibble about the details of each individual story, but almost all the other stories last night were about someone, who got what was coming to them after an investigation.

We all love accountability, which seems to mean the right to be jailed or never work again, if you are stupid enough to take any form of responsibility for another human being. Investigation and blame. Eye for an eye.

Whatever happened to the more humanist or Christian values of learning and changing? We’re not respecting anyone’s memory by all this public revenge. Victims families say again and again that this is not what they want. However once the merry-go-round starts and the press scent blood, the families lose control. And then the story becomes about holding someone responsible. Respecting the victims and making things better in the future gets lost in the blood lust.

We’re all going to hell, but at least someone will be found responsible and burned at the stake.

:(