No, not my cry of support for Peter Pan, rather my response to Gandalf.
The Times and Tim Worstall aren’t
lefties, but are showing one of the nastier sides of the modern Brit
character – somebody must be blamed for every accident. (I think this
attitude is a recent infection from the EU).
But
accidents happen all the time, particularly when people have to make
split-second life-or-death judgment calls when mentally and physically
stressed. And they’re nobody’s fault!
Blaming
people for every accident makes the world less safe, because rather
then avoid future accidents (which they cannot), people move away from
tasks that risk accidents. For example, in the business world of
Customer Support, when management penalizes support engineers for
customer problems, support quality plummets. Because the engineers
learn that supporting customers is painful, and take the easiest
avoidance which is to flee from customer support!
So,
the Times and TW should grow up, support the families of all the 53
dead, and stop distracting the people fighting to keep us safe.
The shooting of de Menezes was not an accident. It was a deliberate action….we just don’t know quite yet who made that deliberation.
Here’s what really worries me. Over the years we’ve had a number of people trying to kill random members of the public. Anarchists, the IRA (several times) and now (in Alex Harrowell’s delightful phrase) the Continuity Taleban. I’m sure there are others we can add to the list. I have no doubt that in the future there will be similar other groups who wish and attempt to do the same. It’s a sad part of life.
I am much more worried about the ability of the State to kill people without being upbraided for it. To say, "It was just an accident" makes the next one more likely. Perhaps I am paranoid on the subject….I live in a country which only 31 years ago was a fascist dictatorship….that dictatorship being the one that Amnesty International was first founded to protest against.
I spent 7 years in immediately post Soviet Russia…I was there before Gorby fell and people would not say anything in any way controversial indoors, we would mime and walk in the park. I’ve walked round a corner to have an AK-47 brandished (and aimed) at me by a youth who wanted to restore that system. I’ve talked to, worked with for years, people who were on both sides of the Gulag, people who went there and people who sent people there.
Yes, perhaps I am paranoid on this subject but I take as the great lesson of the 20th century that it is the State that is not your friend, it is the State, when allowed to get out of hand, that is the greatest threat to your health, safety, continued liberty and yes, even your life.
When we have a Government that not just wishes to but is actively passing the laws that make us all helots, abolishing Habeus Corpus, trial by jury, wishes to brand us all with an ID to permit us to move around the streets..the Civil Contingencies Act which entirely abolishes the rule of law….do you really think I am a touch sensitive for getting worried? And you ask me to just gloss over the shooting of an innocent man?
Nope, sorry, if being adult means that I cannot, should not, insist on holding those who rule over us to account for their actions then I am with Peter Pan and I refuse to grow up.
Leave a Reply