Does nobody have any common sense these days?

[Amy]

From the Daily Mail today:-

A nurse at a leading independent girls school was sacked after smacking her 10 year old son at home because he swore at her.

Susan Pope, 45, was arrested, questioned and spent a night in the cells but no charges were brought.

But the incident did lead to social services placing the boy and his younger sister on the Child Protection Register.

And then Mrs Pope was suspended as senior nurse at Malvern St James Girls School in Worcestershire before being sacked for gross misconduct. The school is one of Britain's top five public schools for young ladies and charges £25,000 a year for full boarding fees.

Mrs Pope said she is appalled her career was wrecked because of "rumour and innuendo" resulting from her disciplining one of her children for being naughty.
It was the boy's elder brother who reported her to the police.

Mrs Pope said: "I smacked my son on the bottom through his clothes in our home after he swore at me after I'd already warned him about his behaviour.
"Children need boundaries. I'm not a politically correct person who thinks you should never smack a child, I think it has a place.

"My eldest son was 15 at the time and going through a bad teenage rebellion and though I adore him he was in bad company and really went off the rails.
"His behaviour became appalling and our 10 year old started mimicking him.
"On the day in question I'd told the younger boy to do something, he told me to 'F*** off' and I warned him about his behaviour and he did it again and so I smacked him on the bottom.

"My eldest son snatched him from the house and went and called the police."
A week later Mrs Pope, who worked at the school for seven years, and her husband Folke, 48, a chartered surveyor, who witnessed the incident in May last year, were both arrested.

"We were held for 32 hours. I was questioned for an hour and a half and my husband for four hours," Mrs Pope said. West Mercia Police investigated allegations of assault and neglect upon the 10 year old and his sister, aged eight.

The Crown Prosecution Service later made the decision to refuse charge on all matters.

The couple, who live in Malvern with their children, have instructed their solicitor to sue the police for alleged unlawful arrest and false imprisonment. Mrs Pope also plans to pursue a claim for unfair dismissal against the school.

She was suspended from her £33,000 a year job for seven months before being sacked last month after a disciplinary hearing.

She said: "My sacking came on the back of innuendo and rumour. The hypocrisy has outraged me. What kind of example is this setting?"

Her solicitor Nicholas Turner said: "I'm appalled at the way the police treated Sue and Folke and gobsmacked at the way the school treated her."

In a letter to Mrs Pope explaining the decision to sack her, the school bursar said social services' decision to place her children on the Child Protection Register under the category of "emotional abuse" cast significant doubt on her suitability to hold her position, and said the school "cannot afford to take any chances." He added: "The school's reputation could be significantly damaged in the event that parents or potential parents were to discover that your children are on the Child Protection Register.

"We do not believe that the school needs to accept this very real risk to its reputation, which has arisen directly as a result of your conduct."

The school's headteacher Rosalind Hayes declined to comment.

A Worcestershire Council spokesman would only say: "In general, we don't take the decision to put children on the Child Protection Register lightly."

A West Mercia Police spokesman said: "We are not aware of any complaint from Mrs Pope at this time. If a complaint is made it will be dealt with appropriately."

[Nattie]

Re: Does nobody have any common sense these days?

I think the fact you read the Daily Mail clearly shows people have no common sense whatsoever.

[Amy]

Re: Does nobody have any common sense these days?

I was looking at this thread Raging seas, gales, and snow ... it must be a bank holiday weekend - Legal Beagles

I don't buy it, I view online

[Tools]

Re: Does nobody have any common sense these days?

That is utterly ridiculous.

[Guest]

Re: Does nobody have any common sense these days?

Common Sense is dead.

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Mr. Common Sense.

Mr. Sense had been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was. His birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.

He will be remembered for having cultivated such value lessons as knowing when to come in out of the rain; why the early bird gets the worm and that life isn't always fair.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies:- don't spend more than you earn and reliable parenting strategies:- adults, not children, are in charge.

His health began to rapidly deteriorate when well intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place.

- Reports of a six-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate;
- teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch;
- a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student.

Issues such as these only worsened his condition.

Mr. Sense declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer aspirin to a student; but, could not inform the parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Finally, Common Sense lost the will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband; churches became businesses and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense finally gave up the ghost after a woman failed to realise that a steaming cup of coffee was hot, she spilled a bit in her lap and was awarded a huge financial settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust, his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son, Reason.

He is survived by two stepbrothers; My Rights and Ima Whiner.

Not many attended his funeral because so few realised he was gone.

[Amy]

Re: Does nobody have any common sense these days?

My 7-year-old son, a tiny splinter and the five-hour farce that shows how the NHS has lost the plot

By JOHN HUMPHRYS

What follows is a parable for our times. Like every good parable it contains a message for all of us - but most especially for the bureaucrats who rule our lives. It concerns my seven-year-old son, a splinter in his finger and the strange ways of that weird and wonderful institution, the National Health Service.

For small boys like my son, who would happily spend their entire lives climbing trees, splinters are an occupational hazard. This one was a bit more stubborn than most.

I tried and failed to dig it out with a needle, and when his finger started swelling up I thought it might be sensible to get it seen to. What a deceptively simple phrase that is: "get it seen to".

In retrospect, I am appalled at my naivety. In my own childhood "getting it seen to" would have meant going to Mr Morgan, the chemist on the corner of the street, who would have dug it out, sloshed some antiseptic on it and sent me home. He was also the man to get the grit out of your eye if your mother couldn't. Fat chance of that happening today - even if my local chemist had been open, which he wasn't. Neither was my GP's surgery.

But I do live near two large hospitals with accident and emergency units, so off we went to the closer of them.

I felt slightly guilty taking up a hospital's time for such a trivial injury - it was, after all, only a little splinter - but I assumed they wouldn't be busy on a bank holiday Saturday with London half-empty. And I was right: there were only a few people in the waiting room. But there was a problem.

"Sorry," said the pleasant young woman at the reception desk. "We don't do children here."

Huh? Don't do children? I showed her the finger. Couldn't someone "do" it?

"Well," she said a little doubtfully, "I expect the nurse will see you." So we waited. The nurse - when we were finally admitted - examined the finger, asked questions, looked worried and said she'd have to fetch the doctor. Along came the doctor, examined the finger and also looked a little worried. By which time I was getting worried too. Gangrene maybe? Would the finger have to come off? The whole arm?

"Can't you get it out," I asked. He shook his head. "Not here," he said, "We don't do children. You'll have to go to an A&E department where they do."

I tried to be reasonable. "Look," I said, "it's a splinter in a finger. It will take you about 30 seconds to get it out and I can take my little boy home and give him his supper instead of traipsing all the way into the West End of London with all the hassle that involves. You can do it, can't you?"

"Yes, of course," he said, "but it's the after-care."

I'm sorry to say that I lost it at that point.

"The after-care? I'm not asking you to perform open-heart surgery! This is a little splinter in a little boy's finger, for God's sake!"

"Please calm down," he said. That was not helpful. I shouted a bit more about the insanity of it all - which made me feel better but also didn't help - and set off for the nearest hospital with a children's A & E unit: St Mary's in Paddington.

An hour later, we were standing before yet another receptionist in yet another waiting room, going through all the same admission procedures. And then we saw another nurse.

This one thought my son should have some painkiller. Just in case. She also thought he should have an X-ray. Just in case. So she rang the X-ray department, explained the situation, and was told that, no, they didn't think it would be necessary. So back we went to the waiting room to wait for the doctor. She was lovely - bright and friendly - and she examined the finger and thought we'd better have an X-ray. So we did.

Nothing. Wood doesn't show up on X-rays. We were referred to a more senior doctor.

She was also delightful and after yet another examination told the junior doctor she should take out the splinter with a needle and squeeze out the pus. Which is what she did. Very competently, too. It turned out to be a tiny thorn. And finally we went home - one small boy tired and very hungry and one father baffled by the whole thing.

To remove that little thorn from a finger we had seen two receptionists, two nurses, three doctors of varying seniority and one X-ray technician. We had set out in the afternoon and were returning home nearly five hours later. My little boy was full of painkiller for his non-existent pain and might also have been full of antibiotics if I had given him the medicine - which I did not.

God knows what the whole thing cost or how many NHS targets it helped meet. If any.

Now, look, I know I should be grateful - and I am. My little boy no longer has a swollen finger and I no longer have to worry about some hideous infection ravaging his entire body. It didn't cost me anything apart from the better part of an afternoon and an evening and another little boost for my blood pressure. And almost everyone I dealt with was unfailingly courteous.

But there was one thing missing. One vital ingredient without which no organisation can properly function. Common sense.

About a quarter of all patients at A&E units are children and it makes a lot of sense to have special facilities for them.

Nine years ago, a comprehensive review of services for children in A&E was carried out by experts from the royal colleges and professional associations.
They found many failings. They made 32 recommendations and emphasised the need for separate and specialised care.

Five years later a report in the British Medical Journal concluded that there were still fundamental problems. A quarter of the big A&E units did not have separate triage facilities for children where an immediate assessment of their needs could be made, and even in those that did, nearly a quarter did not have a nurse who had been specially trained to do the work.

A third of A & E consultants had received no training in the care of children.
Obviously, that was wrong. Equally obviously, it makes sense to have specialist A & E units where a child badly hurt in a road accident, for instance, can be rushed for specialist treatment.

But it cannot possibly make sense for a child with a minor injury to be turned away from hospitals where the staff are under no pressure at all. What if it had been a major injury? Would they still have told me to go elsewhere?

I put all this to a spokesman for NHS London - a sensible chap - and he agreed with me. It was, he said with studied understatement, "somewhat surprising" that we had been turned away.

The NHS will be 60 years old this summer and the results of the latest review into the treatment of children in hospitals will be announced - part of the wide-ranging Darzi review set up by Gordon Brown when he moved into No 10.

Whatever else they may recommend, it's to be hoped they have already decided on their first finding: "We propose that the guiding principle of the system shall be common sense."

[theGobbyOne]

Re: Does nobody have any common sense these days?

The world has gone stark raving crazy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Guest]

Re: Does nobody have any common sense these days?

I blame the uncontrolled and gratuitous use of exclamation marks.