Hugh Pennington

The government blame game about the floods is in full spate. Eric Pickles is a penitent convert to dredging. ‘For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong,’ H.L. Mencken said. The Somerset Levels have been flooding regularly since well before the Domesday Book. Pumping has been going on for almost 200 years. But once the media have got a grip, scapegoats must be found. I expect that a Public Inquiry will be announced soon, ostensibly ‘to get to the truth’ but really to kick everything into touch.

Rukshar Khatoon, from Sahapara, Howrah District, West Bengal, has joined Saiban Bibi, a Bangladeshi beggar living on a platform of the railway station at Karimganj, Assam, and an unnamed cow grazing in Tamil Nadu, as markers of the success of vaccination programmes in India, successes which confounded all the critics. Rukshar was 18 months old when she developed paralytic polio in January 2011. Saiban was 30 when she developed smallpox on 24 May 1975. The Tamil Nadu cow developed rinderpest in September 1995. All three diseases are now extinct in India.

Horse sold as beef led to Chris Elliott’s review into the integrity and assurance of food supply networks. His interim report was published on 12 December. The proposed ‘food crime unit’ gripped the media. It’s a good idea. But not as good as the idea for a ‘legally privileged information gathering facility’ run by industry, separate from government. Elliott could have called it a ‘clype unit’ if he’d used his Ulster Scots. A clype is a tell-tale. The facility would be a safe haven for industry to share suspicions, even gossip, while protecting commercial confidentiality.

The UK fossil fuel extraction industry has always been dangerous for its workers, even if things are orders of magnitude safer today than they used to be. In 1938, 858 coal miners were killed in accidents, including 90 in explosions, 408 by roof falls, 194 in haulage and transport accidents underground, and 76 on the surface. Others died from Weil’s disease caught by contact with rat urine. Thousands developed pneumoconiosis, and paraplegia from roof falls was common.

Late in the evening of 6 July 1988, the Piper Alpha oil platform 110 miles north-east of Aberdeen was destroyed by two big explosions; 167 men were killed. The Cullen Inquiry found that the platform had been inspected 12 days before the disaster to check on progress following a fatal accident nine months before. The inspector had spent ten hours on the platform and concluded that ‘lessons appear to have been learned’. Lord Cullen was not impressed: 'the inspection... was superficial to the point of being little use as a test of safety on the platform. It did not reveal any one of a number of clear-cut and readily ascertainable deficiencies.’ Recent events surrounding the Care Quality Commission and the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust seem little different in principle. Whatever transpires regarding the alleged cover-ups, there is agreement that the CQC should have done better as an inspectorate.