The nanny state

There's a great article by Simon Jenkins in today's Guardian on the overbearing efforts of the Health and Safety Executive to make our lives utterly risk free. Jenkins make the point that sometimes accidents just happen and there is not always someone to blame when things go wrong. I think there is something sick about a culture that has to find a culprit whenever something bad happens. The old legal term, 'an act of God' seems to have fallen into disuse. While perhaps not entirely accurate, it always seemed to me a useful device for apportioning responsibility when no one was at fault.

I have long thought that we are all becoming a little bit complicit in this emerging blame society: there must be complex changes going on at an individual pyscholgical level which are reflected in the slow process of cultural change.