We love a public inquiry round my way. Its almost England’s biggest industry. We’ve had 3 into the Hillsborough disaster, the last finishing just a few months ago, 30 years after the event. Made a lot of people feel better. Though failed to bring any of the 98 dead back to life. Even lawyers have limits. Even the (guessing) 50 million quid has limits.

We’ve had two Bloody Sunday inquiries. The second lasting about 7 years and becoming the most expensive inquiry ever. Again, it failed to bring back any lives.

And some things are basically, inherently, intuitively wrong. And need looking into. Police shootings, obviously, if there are doubts, and all travesties of justice.

But you have to look at what is to be gained and how much it will cost. That is emphatically NOT putting a monetary value on death or disaster. Its just a natural question. How much will it cost? And WHAT WILL BE GAINED????

I appreciate the value of just ‘knowing’, just ‘understanding’, and vindication and apportionment of blame. But does the end justify the means?

The Child Abuse public inquiry is in a mess. They’ve appointed 3 women to run the thing, and all have gone. There are 155 people involved in this, and they have no leader. Because the last one left this week. Having done, in legal terms, pretty well fuck all, in her year in office. 3 months of which she managed to fritter away back home in New Zealand.

So there’s an understandable issue about her ‘grotesque’ salary. £350,000 a year, plus another £100k for rent. But that misses the point. If you want a top lawyer to run a massive task, they need to be properly remunerated. The problem is the scope of the inquiry. Which is basically: anyone in any walk of life who has ever abused a child, historically, and the extent of culpability of the institutions to which they belong.

That’s big. That’s churches, its schools, its parliament, orphanages, hospitals. Examining the individuals and the institutions themselves. To see if they were negligent, complicit or just stupid.

Oh, and it was 30/40 years ago. So many of the accused have died, all the ‘institutions’ now obviously under completely different management, if they still exist at all. So in terms of ‘prosecution’ its very limited.

Child abuse is the worst thing ever. It must always be taken totally seriously. Convicted paedophiles are untreatable, therefore should be locked up forever (for all I care about them) or castrated, or shot. All of which is too good for them.

But public enquiries do not make it all go away. At very best they simply shift the focus of responsibility a little. At worst they’re just a total waste of time and public money. Investigate and prosecute individuals, however long ago it was; that’s police procedure. But to create a vast and ill-defined public inquiry every ten minutes does not solve any problems. Not in my mind anyway.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx