Monday 6 December 2010

So, No-One Is Responsible, Right?

I think that's how it usually goes.

Not the mental health workers:
Mental health workers refused to section him five days before the killing despite pleas from his mother, who felt 'bullied and threatened' by him.
Not the NHS authority:
Now an inquiry has found that Newton was never properly assessed despite 15 years of dealings with Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust.

It found that his medical notes were kept in a 'chaotic' state and the Trust failed to treat his long-term drug abuse.
Not the PCSOs:
Newton, from Bristol, suffered paranoid delusions and the day before the attack told two PCSOs his daughter had been cloned and his mother had a grave under her car.

But they thought he was joking and did not even record the incident.
As usual, the state looks after its own:
But despite this, the report concluded that the killing could not have been prevented.
The irony is, it maybe couldn't. But then, we'll never know, will we?
He admitted manslaughter with diminished responsibility but this was rejected by a judge and he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 16 years in 2008.
Prison?!? *sigh*


6 comments:

Timdog said...

Pardon my French, but Jesus H. Bollocking Christ. So no-one sections this guy, but Stephen Neary is going to be sent to Wales, far from his Dad, and left to rot? For fuck's sake.

Is it too much to ask that just one of these knife-wielding lunatics might perhaps stumble across whoever runs the Court of Protection in an alley? It's not as if it would be anyone's fault...

Private Widdle said...

Timdog- nail firmly on head.

Look at the way social workers and plod act these days- they go after easy targets; for more examples look at the examples highlighted by Christopher Booker in the Sunday Telegraph recently.

They have all these powers, the mechanisms are in place, with committees and lawyers and budgets that need to be spent.

They've got a fuzzbox and they're gonna use it....

Jim said...

As Private Widdle says, the whole social work/mental health/police system is run for the benefit of the people running it, not the public at large. Far easier to deal draconianly with the middle classes than attempt to deal with the underclasses.

Anonymous said...

There seems no official attempt to collate these 'no one could have foreseen' incidents to 'learn the lessons'. Yet AP seems finds them almost daily. I wonder how many there are?

JuliaM said...

"So no-one sections this guy, but Stephen Neary is going to be sent to Wales, far from his Dad, and left to rot? "

That seems about the size of it. For the reasons Private Widdle & Jim outline, no doubt.

"Look at the way social workers and plod act these days- they go after easy targets..."

Indeed.

Once, it would have been the articulate middle classes with access to lawyers that would have been the ones to steer clear of; now, of course, the laws have been debased and the underclass know their rights and have free access to that which the squeezed middle classes can no longer afford...

"...the whole social work/mental health/police system is run for the benefit of the people running it, not the public at large."

Which is why any 'across the board cuts' are doomed to failure - they need to be targeted to cut down on the inevitable empire building.

"I wonder how many there are?"

I bet there's more than ever see the inside of the newsdesk...

Nick2 said...

Very distressing story re the baby poisoned with excess salt. How can that not be medical negligence, especially as the NHS trust has admitted liability?