Baby P - Murdered, Failed by Society and Buried in a Paupers Grave

I was reading through the Telegraph today and a sad picture caught my eye that of a memorial to 'baby-P'. What struck me was that even in death he has no identity - even this has been taken away in the cause of correctness. On the card with the flowers his name shown as 'Baby P'. Brutally killed, failed by society, ashes scattered in a paupers funeral apparently anonymous.

I do not want vigilantes either even those who did this should have due process but at least there could be an exception for the victim by giving this young victim his identity back. As we all know we are not permitted to name either the murder victim or the mother and father due to court restrictions although if you need to know five minutes on the internet will suffice. Unfortunately for the authorities the news is out and the names of the victim and the two criminals who did this are not hard to find - although be quick as they are being very skilful at closing these information leaks. It’s a shame that the authorities did not spend as much time on baby P's right to life as they are apparently in ensuring the identities of the perpetrators are kept secret.

It is disturbing to see Haringey council senior staff tripping over which initial to use (B or P) during an 'apology' and every commentator dutifully depersonalising the whole affair by reducing the victim to an abstract formulation not Jack, John or Paul but 'Baby P'. Perhaps it helps them make sense of their own emotional responses to their failings or perhaps more to reduce the whole affair to a simple case to be solved, lessons learnt and so on. The usual drivel and official speak that exudes from institutions such as the social services during such times - not designed for clarity but for obfuscation and the avoidance of blame

The mother who has given birth to another baby in prison apparently wants access to the baby, which given the sorry tale of political correctness and incompetence displayed by child protection agencies and social workers till now will no doubt be looked at seriously - why not parental access for the illiterate thug who fathered the poor child while we are at it.

It is too easy to criticise the social workers on the ground for this failing - they are doing a tough job for little money and surprising or not you do get variable levels of competence in every job so you will get incompetence given the level of staff that can be recruited to do such an onerous task. What is wrong here is lack of systemic control and supervision which will no doubt be resolved at some time when those who are supposed to provide this function come under scrutiny as the search for a scrape goat begins. Contrast this with the silly jape Ross and Brand got up to the other week in an incident blown out of all proportion compared to this sorry state of affairs where no one comes forward, unless pushed to explain how this has happened, no heads roll (yet), no resignations, a slap on wrists all round and the whole thing being pushed into the long grass with a call for a public enquiry as a sop to the public.
The response to this incident is simply insufficient and it is clear that some authorities have no idea of the scale of this problem and how it is being felt.

It is probably more important to think how we got here it is true - for if in this day and age scores of children die every year at the hands of their carers, mostly young people illiterate and simply incapable of performing any useful function let alone raising a child, then we really are in danger of becoming a broken society.