Caption: The Metropolitan Police hard at work.
The accidental release of the imported sex offender Hadush Kebatu from Chelmsford Gaol was not just a gross administrative error, but is also an event that is a microcosm of modern Britain. Granted that accidental releases have happened in the past under many different Home Secretaries from both main Westminster parties, this one feels and looks different. It feels different because it is part of a pattern of state failure that we are increasingly seeing across the board, not just in HM Prisons Service. We now have state failure in prisons, policing, healthcare, education, borders, the justice system, social care and much much more. I could fill reams of close typed examples of state failure in the UK from incidents such as the accidentally released foreign nonce, via the rape gang horror to a healthcare system whose maternity division has approximately 60% of its facilities being considered as ‘unsafe’. Britain has been mismanaged so badly and for so long that maybe it’s time to change the traditional national anthem of ‘God Save The King’ to something that reflects the mess that Britain has been turned into by our political and administrative classes?
The police who should have caught this nonce are also illustrative of state failure. The police didn’t capture this criminal despite a vast amount of information floating around about him and it was down to members of the public to do the spotting that caught this man. Whilst accepting that police cannot police without the help and consent of the public, I would have expected much more visible effort from both the Metropolitan and Essex Police forces being displayed. Police forces such as the aforementioned are just two of those that are gung ho for cracking down on ‘speech crimes’ by Britons but have turned out to be worse than useless when trying to recapture a dangerous, imported and unwanted sex offender.
Poor management, possible dubious hiring practises, underfunding, poor resource use choices and the sort of weapons grade incompetence that I’ve seen by the ton right across the public sector, played a massive part in the release of this nonce. Nobody seems to have properly checked at any stage during what I believe is a lengthy pre-release process, whether this relatively high profile prisoner should be released into the community.
Nothing about this massive screw up is unique, it’s the sort of cock up that’s now ‘normal for Britain’. It’s the sort of error that we find in education, social services, healthcare, the defence establishment and just about any environment where the state is the primary controller or where the state sets the agenda for an organisation.
We are in a mess of our Establishment’s own making. That mess will eat the entire nation if it is not cleared up but the clearing up is going to end up being socially and politically brutal but leaving the situation as it is is no real good answer either.
Oh and that suggestion for a new, more appropriate national anthem? Well why not Yakety Sax a tune also known as the ‘Benny Hill chase music’. It and its association with the slapstick chases of the late Mr Hill, says a great deal about Britain and the mess we are in.
And here it is.
