Let’s say you put your car in for a service. In the process of changing the oil, the mechanic doesn’t tighten the sump plug properly after draining the old lubricant. You drive the car home. After ten miles, all the new oil has leaked from the sump and the car’s engine seizes.

If you returned to the garage to demand to know what had gone wrong and what could be done about it, what would you think if the garage manager said, “sorry sir, we have no idea how this happened or who was responsible”? You’d be amazed if the car hadn’t been booked in and the mechanic who did the work hadn’t made a note that it was complete.

So how about this:

BBC News: CPS rules out Potters Bar trial

Manslaughter charges will not be brought over the Potters Bar rail crash in which seven died and 76 were hurt, the Crown Prosecution Service has said.

So far, so Pope/Catholic, bears/woods. Railway companies have been killing the public with impunity for years now. Victims’ “[r]elatives said they were angry but not surprised.” And then we have this:

Crucial nuts that should have been holding the tracks together were found lying unscrewed alongside the rails.

The British Transport Police have not been able to discover when the bolts came loose - and who might have been responsible for ensuring they were tightened.

Well, donning my deerstalker and lighting my meerschaum I’d start at the bottom. “I don’t want to see the chap who wielded the spanner take all the blame,” said one relative. No, but I’d like to see him sitting in a chair in a police interview room with a bloody big bright light shining on him.

And once I’d got to the bottom of why he didn’t replace the nuts, I’d have his immediate supervisor in with the work logs for that stretch of track. And so on and so forth right up to the more-than-you-can-spend-in-a-lifetime salaries and dead-before-you-see-it-all pensions. The second a piece of paper didn’t appear when requested, I’d see if a perverting the course of justice charge loosened filing cabinets and tongues.

Somebody took those nuts off that track. He knows why he did it and why he didn’t put them back. Maybe he forgot. Maybe his manager said, “leave them, do it tomorrow, it’ll be alright.” Where was the inspection to make sure the repairs had been conducted properly? It seems one wasn’t conducted. Why not?

You see, this isn’t rocket science and yet the police have “not been able to discover when the bolts came loose - and who might have been responsible for ensuring they were tightened.”

Legally, companies are entities in their own right, which gives the mental impression of a lumbering troll moving under its own volition. “In the most recent report into the crash, the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) said the cause may have been maintenance practices dating back to before privatisation,” said the BBC. I think we can be sure the nuts weren’t undone before 1979 and they weren’t taken off by some nebulous “practices”. I’m pretty sure British Rail isn’t to blame for the Potter’s Bar rail crash.

The government want to keep details of every adult citizen in the UK on a big computer to stop us getting up to no good. Corporate behemoths in charge of public safety? No need to be so fastidious. Cabinet ministers have big shiny cars after all, so where’s the real pressure for accountability over rail safety going to come from? I bet somebody makes damn sure the wheel nuts on Tony Blair’s carriage are on tight.

At the risk of repeating myself. A man. Yes, a man. With a spanner. Yes, a spanner. Took those nuts off the track. A train came over the track. The nuts hadn’t been put back. Seven people were killed. For want of a nail the kingdom was lost.

Is there any other walk of life, save politics obviously, where people can walk away from the deaths of others so easily? It’s the cowardice of the schoolboy tactic of staying silent, in the knowledge that without proof you’re free, that makes the fists clench like the Boston Strangler.

School Master: “Jenkins, who scrumped the apples from the back orchard?”

Jenkins (staring at shoes): “Don’t know, sir.”

These people are lucky my dad isn’t running the criminal justice system in this country. When my brother and I were young and had been up to something he couldn’t get to the bottom of, he’d crack us both “to make sure I’ve got the right one.” It certainly focussed minds the next time one of us misbehaved.

If a baker gets his bicarbonate of soda mixed up with his caustic soda when making bread, shouldn’t he blame his system rather than himself when his customers turn up, ahem, brown bread? Or is it only a seat on the board that confers this privilege, this membership of a new aristocracy? Not exactly a situation where “power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many not the few.”

If I forget to close the stair gate this evening and my one year-old falls down the stairs and breaks her neck, it’s not my fault is it? Somebody should’ve checked.

If I keep schtum the police won’t be able to discover when the gate came open - and who might have been responsible for ensuring it was closed.

Posted on October 17th, 2005 at 7:50 pm

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