Good points Bromptonaut, (particularly one individual carrying the can), however, I do still feel we have a penchant for lining the suits pockets here in the UK above everything else? Things like this seem to take forever, (and I'm not so sure the truth comes-out in the end anyway when the "establishment" are in the firing line)?

Edited by nick62 on 16/02/2016 at 19:24

The problem is with UK enquiries is that all the different parties involved are often more interested in covering their own backsides and seeing to it that others are blamed (or blamed shared - 'its the system', not indiciduals [see North Staffs NHS enquiry - nobody prosecuted yet, after how many years?]) or the enquiry itself protrayed as a 'whitewash' (the David Kelly enquiry, Iraq, etc). Politicians over here (as elsewhere) often do so from the start, either by employing 'friends' or inadequate people to run them or using their own people/media allies to undermine the enquiries themselves.

Some good can come out of such enquiries, but often takes several years (even decades) to 'implement' and the recommendations often get skewed or changed for political purposes. If only such enquiries were conducted without bias by people solely interested in finding the truth and making sensible recommendations in a timely manner and at a reasonable cost to the public. You'd be surprised at how many took so long, cost so much, despite the truth and answers being blindly obviou to most ordinary people.

The only people to 'win' out of UK public enquiries are the lawyers and civil servants being paid fortunes to take part, and the politicians (and similar activists/union leaders) who use them as platforms for their own agendas.

I'm just reading Matthew Syed's latest book - Black Box Thinking - which looks at how different organisations and business consider and react to failures.

The airline industry is by far top of the pile on how it investigates failures and this is shown by just how safe flying now is. Whilst the pilot may be the person responsible for the flight, in any accident it is often a number of errors which compound to give the pilot the job of trying to sort it all out in a pressured situation - the investigation looks at everything to see what failures lead to the problem and how they could be mitigated.

Aircraft running out of fuel whilst the pilot and engineer try and sort a landing gear fault. Despite being told fuel was low they became obsessed with landing gear and ran out of fuel. It was in fact a faulty connection, the wheels were all down and locked in place.

There are now new procedures for landing gear fault lights. Flying an approach so ground staff could check if the wheels were down was the obvious first step, but back then this wasn't even in the procedures, neither was landing with one wheel not down - you'll damage the plane, but chances of survival are higher than running out of fuel and hitting the ground at 200mph!

Syed then contrasts this with the health service - UK and US - where senior staff are still deemed untouchable and failure of systems and porcesses is rarely acknowledged as the reason for tragedies.

Well worth a read.

Edited by daveyjp on 22/02/2016 at 12:59