Viruses known to be in blood products, multiple bugs known to be in a computer system, inflammable cladding knowingly fitted onto buildings... This week the public inquiries into these three preventable disasters were back in the headlines.

    Of course, the already-dead will never get redress from any inquiry. Nor will those whose lives were turned upside down, or those who were permanently physically and mentally injured.

    This well-after-the-event tried-and-tested practice of addressing the profound failings of the social system is designed, precisely, to kick any real "redress" into the long grass.

    And it works well for those who are responsible, for those who deliberately turned a blind eye, and for those who ignored warnings. And all the more so, if they'd decided to take a calculated risk with the human lives under their care or their management, for the sake of cost-savings, let alone what turns out to be a gruesome lack of compassion.

    Inquiry, decades after the event, they merely have to say : "I don't remember" Which is exactly what has been happening in the Post Office Horizon Inquiry, for instance!

Nobody told her?

Paula Vennells, the CEO of the Post Office from 2012-2019, (but she'd been in senior management since 2007!) shed lots of tears among her many "sorry's" while in the dock this week. But did she take any responsibility for the human consequences of the 23-year-long denial and cover-up perpetrated by her and her "colleagues" at the top of this institution? Absolutely not!

    This top boss claims she "wasn't told" about the problems of the Fujitsu Horizon system. She even claimed that her only fault was to be "too trusting"! For her, there had been "no miscarriage of justice" by the Post Office (that is, by her and her minions) against the 900 sub-postmasters who had already won their case over this in the high court!

    And by the way, she calls it "the" Post Office as if she was a mere cog in the wheel - never mind she was the wheel! "Not me, Gov", says she! But it was she who was "Gov"! Even her fellow boss, Moya Green, CEO of the Post Office's partner, Royal Mail, asked Vennells, "how could you not know"?

    At the end of the first day of Vennells appearance, the chair of the Inquiry, Wyn Williams felt he had to intervene, asking how come she, who paid herself more than £4.5m in salary and bonuses, did not realise until 2012 that "the Post Office was conducting its own prosecutions as a state body with al powers"?

    "I have no recollection", answered Vennells. But of course this, the real Post Office thief, did know. Will she be convicted? Not bl**dy likely.

...And after half-a-century....

The "tainted blood scandal" is called the worst disaster in the history of the NHS. More than 30,000 people were infected by contaminated blood between the 1970s and 1990s and 3,000 died after contracting hepatitis B, hepatitis C and/or HIV/AIDS.

    The inquiry led by "Sir" Brian Langstaff into this calamity has only just concluded. It exposed a more than 40-year cover-up at every level, not only of the NHS but also the government's Department of Health.

    When there was a shortage of blood products to treat haemophiliacs (an inherited disease where blood fails to clot, leading to potential fatal bleeding) these products were imported, but were not tested properly. But even the locally-sourced blood products weren't properly checked for contaminants like viruses! Those responsible for this (but nearly half-a- century later some are dead and can never be held accountable) willfully took the risk of exposing patients to infection.

    The conclusion of the report speaks for itself. Given that the risk of infective viruses in blood products had been known since 1948, those in authority in the NHS and government were guilty of "downright deception".

    "This disaster was not an accident", said Langstaff, "The infections happened because those in authority - doctors, the blood services and successive governments - did not put patient safety first".

    Yes indeed. At best, they took a "calculated risk", just as they do in every other sphere of social life! Cutting costs comes first. Sure, it would have cost more to have sterilized blood products, or sourced them reliably, instead of buying them from the US, for instance, where blood donors, who were paid, were often drug addicts using shared needles and thus sharing their viruses...

    What's clear in all of this, is that while a capitalist system exists, which places the accumulation of profits (or, in public services, its corollary, that is, cost-cutting) over human life, the scandals will just keep coming. The only way to end them is to end the profit system. There is no other way.