SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND: Whitewash, by Wiggia

Medical practitioner and multiple murderer Harold Shipman;
initially the inquiry was to have been held in secret

The call for an inquiry into the government's handling of Covid follows an inevitable pattern in these matters, various organisations are getting their ducks in a row to make political capital out of government mistakes during the last twelve months of lock down and confusion.

There is certainly a case to get to the bottom of why we along with other nations followed the path we did and are doing; never before has a pandemic been handled in this way, and in the scheme of things a minor pandemic at that.

The cris of ‘one life’ and 'saving the NHS' seem to have been enough to chuck certain sections of society on to the scrap heap and close down sections like hospitality and live entertainment to such an extent that  much will not recover in years, bankruptcy and unemployment beckon in those sectors like never before.

Naturally the call for further measures - rightly or wrongly, we have currently no way of telling - have come from the public sector safe in their jobs and protected pensions, the NHS has (apart from those on the front line, and we have no means of finding out how many that encompassed) been at home or working very short weeks, such as GPs yet still all get their full salaries. Where I live we have many doctors, surgeons and nurses as our neighbours as we are near the city hospital; along with teachers, many have been home for long periods of time, and the ‘we have been working from home’ mantra doesn’t wash when you see DIY and home improvements being carried out everywhere on a grand scale.

The decision to shut down the NHS to save itself was one that has grave consequences for those suffering from anything but the virus. The acronym the Covid Health Service is certainly justified, but with reports beginning to leak out about how many people went into hospital Covid-free only to catch the virus while there, perhaps there is a good case for being a Covid-only service; who in their right mind would want to go into hospital when the chances of contracting the virus have been as high as 40% - see this from the Daily Telegraph:

“More than 11,000 people who went into England's hospitals with unrelated issues contracted virus in December and early January”

The death toll from failure to treat other conditions will probably never be released and more likely hidden and a lot of can-kicking will ensue.

Care homes are the biggest disgrace in health this country has seen. The decisions on decanting elderly patients from hospitals into care homes, the lack of provision for care home workers re PPE and the failure to even monitor what was going on hovers like a stench over those responsible whether NHS or civil servants.

So an inquiry is inevitable. We are good at inquiries; as has been said before they are one of the few growth areas in the country these days. We or those who are involved do like  a good and long inquiry, the longer the better, longer because all those on the inquiry gravy train carry on earning at the expense of the taxpayer and longer because it suits those in the headlights because people simply get bored with the whole and forget why the inquiry was held in the first place; a win-win, but not for the general public, the people affected by the decisions and by the same token the ones paying for it all.

In the last 30 years there have been 68 public inquiries. Only 5 have had their recommendations acted upon in any way. £635 million has been spent on them up till 2017. Even the Bloody Sunday one has done nothing during the years it has gone on to change anything, a total waste of everyone's time.

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/news/latest/government-must-act-public-inquiry-recommendations

There are currently two in progress, if you can call it progress: the Grenfell Tower inquiry and the contaminated blood inquiry. The Grenfell inquiry was sabotaged by vested interests from the start, - wrong sort of inquiry board, wrong sort of ‘experts,’ local council absolving itself - and then it became a platform as so many of this type do today, a platform to display angst for those involved and also to milk the system for money which makes all angst go away if there is enough of it. I suspect everyone will be blamed in one form or another and rightly so but little other than 'lessons have been learned' will come of it; the man who left his fridge on fire and actually caused it all is nowhere to be seen.

We are now going to have a new inquiry into the new coal mine in Cumbria. This has nothing to do with anything other than clear the government of making a ‘wrong’ decision in the first place. It wasn’t wrong of course but the green lobby must have their way on all matters these days and the government has caved in to their demands under the pretext that there have been ‘further developments’ since giving the go-ahead; anyone who believes that needs their bumps felt.

This proposal was to extract coking coal for steel production and had new emission control production facilities but as usual it is never enough for the green lobby, so now, probably after a protracted and expensive inquiry we will stop the mine producing and purchase our coking coal from elsewhere - from a country that can pollute the planet on our behalf, so that’s all right then.

No doubt the calls are going out to likely friends/candidates to run this nice little earner as we speak.

The Jay report into the Rotherham child sex abuse scandal was actually achieved in good time and its conclusions left no doubt as to what had gone on and who was to blame, both perpetrators and police and local government. Despite all that good work the result is a resounding zero, the same thing is still going on and the court cases are still being hushed to protect community cohesion. The government report on the Jay report has been kicked down the road for so long that when it was not released to the public few cared, as was the whole purpose in the first place.

So what is the point of them? Very little is achieved, in fact nothing in the vast majority, people say they are sorry years later, well some do, and it all goes down the memory hole, that’s the way to do it.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/sep/15/public-inquiries-ignored-lord-bichard

And waiting in the wings is potentially the biggest longest most expensive one yet, the Coronavirus Inquiry; what a feast of milking the system on public money that will be!