Passing the Baby

I know I have castigated the press recently for publishing attacks vilifying Sharon Shoesmith while her Employment Tribunal remains unheard (whatever you think of her and her actions, everyone should be entitled to a fair hearing without the likes of The Sun or the Daily Mail pre-judging the issue for us) but I could not let the news go unrecorded, that in fact Baby P's mother could have been prosecuted, but for an apparent fumble by the police in handing over his file when one officer left and eight weeks seemingly passed before it came to the notice of their replacement.

I am only posting this to observe that, although several media sources have made the point that this prosecution, had it gone ahead, would have given the social workers a stronger legal foothold for taking Baby P away, no-one as far as I can see from either Ofsted or Ed Balls's office has said words to the effect of "Oh, now we see, the situation was actually more complex than we first thought, there were obviously a number of contributing factors, and in fact our Gaderene Swine rush to judgement via the media may have been hasty and ill-advised"

Don't hold your breath.