Baby P - many questions, few answers

A useful post at Burning Our Money about baby P, reminding us that the previous Ofsted inspection was led by one Juliet Winstanley, who'd worked under the now suspended social service head Ms Shoesmith in a previous job. It delivered a favourable report on the basis of a self-assessment. We know how reliable La Shoesmith's self-assessments were.

Of course this isn't the only smoking gun for central government. Before Balls' tardiness there was Brown's failure to understand that La Shoesmith's report, even though it identified mistakes, might be a bucket of whitewash - as it proved.

Then there's the whistleblower's report, which was passed around Whitehall as the government had shuffled responsibilities, and ended up with the hapless Ofsted.

Mike Denham suggests the solution is a return to local control. To those prevaricating third raters on show at the press conference? If that was the leader, what are the rest like? To a council which let a child die while it scattered money on foreign treats? To a chief executive who apparently had a failing children's department at her previous council, Stoke? This is no solution at Haringey.