Last updated 11:24, Thursday, 20 November 2008

WE are very good at playing the blame game.

And in the case of the shocking death of Baby P, it's easy to find plenty of people to point the finger of blame at. But how often do we look at ourselves and the world we have tacitly allowed to develop all around us?

We moan, my word we moan, about Town Hall and Government bureaucracy, about the box-ticking mentality, about the benefits scandal, the system which almost encourages young women to have children by several different fathers and all the rest.

Over a period of years we have watched the decline in family values and moaned about that, too. But it's always somebody else's problem. And when something goes appallingly wrong, as happened in the case of Baby P, we start apportioning blame.

Maybe, as we join the media opprobrium of the social services officials, social workers and the rest, we ought to think about our own part in the flawed world we inhabit.

Baby P's death is a terrible indictment of the failure of those who were there to protect him, and others like him. But it's also an indictment of the world we countenance. They say the path to hell is paved with good intentions. Never more so than now.