Being sorry about such a tragedy is not the same as being made a scapegoat for it, as child killings cannot all be prevented. It was clear to anyone that read it that the Ofsted report, on which Ed Balls relied for recommending Shoesmith's sacking, was light on detail (see my previous blog entry at the time). And the Sun doesn't always get everything right (see Greenslade blog in the Guardian).
If this is a test of the Sun's ability to whip up moral panic, it deserves to lose, although of course, more fundamentally, society needs to move on from its blame culture. Let's hope the Court of Appeal gets it right in this important case, in which case it will have been worth the money.
