HOW different might things have turned out for Fiona Pilkington and her daughter if they had just had someone from the police or local council to talk to face to face?

The Home Secretary, police and social services have, to their credit, accepted blame for the torment that led to Miss Pilkington and 18-year-old Francecca ending their lives in a blazing car because they could no longer stand being hounded by local youths.

But sometimes sorry just isn’t enough. We’ve heard all the promises in the past. The assurances that things will be done differently. Yet, still events like this come along to shock us.

People of my generation are often accused of living in some airy fairy world of past innocence and failing to keep pace with progress.

Progress? Have we really progressed as a society when a police force fails to respond to no fewer than 33 distress calls over a period of seven years. When unremitting thuggery is merely classed as “low priority?”

In the almost fanatical pursuits of diversity, equality, of pleasing every minority, in the target-driven world of the modern police and the soft approach of social services, we’ve forgotten the real job which ought to be to protect decent members of the public from the feral creatures who inhabit so many of our streets.

When members of the public do intervene they are more likely to suffer arrest and charges than the criminals responsible for the disorder.

Have we really got our sense of priorities so mixed up that when a dinner lady reports to an anxious parent that her daughter has been tied up by playground bullies, acting more like terrorists than schoolkids, it’s the dinner lady who gets sacked and the school is more concerned about covering up the incident with a bland report?

In the old days Fiona Pilkington would almost certainly have had a local bobby to talk to. Someone who knew the patch and its problems. Someone who would not treat her like some barmy complainer. She would have talked to a real person, not some remote control centre.

Round our way we had the perfect disincentive to youthful misbehaviour. He was called Paddy and I don’t think it’s telling tales out of school to say that he preferred a clip round the ear to a 10-page crime report when it came to dealing with miscreants.

One reformed tearaway of the parish once told me that he was given the option by Paddy of being marched home to his parents or being taken round the back of the local dance hall and given a clip. He chose the latter and admitted it was the best life lesson he ever learned.

Well, of course we can’t have that sort of instant justice now. Apparently Leicestershire police, where Miss Pilkington had the misfortune to reside, thought it was wrong to criminalise young thugs at all. I don’t suppose she wanted her tormentors beating up, just dealing with under the law of the land.

The inquest into her death threw a damning light on officialdom in its various forms. Sorry for now, but will the lessons really be heeded? I have my doubts.

And she only wanted someone who was willing to listen. It wasn’t much to ask, was it?

THE KNOCK IN THE NIGHT

THEY’VE made kids scared of adults. Now they are turning adult against adult.

Thousands of us might have heard the cold knock in the night of the Ofsted inspectors if the story of two mothers who got together to share caring for their respective children is anything to go by. Leanne Shepherd was ordered to end her private arrangement with a work colleague or face prosecution as an illegal childminder.

Many years since, when I was a parent of three young children, it was perfectly sensible to share responsibility with other mums and dads. You picked up their kids from school if mum couldn’t make it. They did the same for you. A hospital appointment and you would look after the nippers for the day. It seems we were all lawbreakers. But I don’t suppose then we had snooping Government inspectors wanting to micro-manage everything we do from parental decisions to what we put in our waste bins or encouraging us to treat our best friends like criminals.

Ironically the two women are now applying for child care benefits. And where does this match up with the Government’s plan to get more women back to work? Madness abounds.

LAKE WITH AN IDENTITY CRISIS

WHAT have they done to the Queen of the English Lakes? As long as I can remember it has been Derwentwater, but lately there’s been a proclivity in certain quarters to split it down the middle.

Is there some move afoot in the tourist industry and among our local authorities to rebrand Derwentwater as Derwent Water? And why the sudden change? I’m sure the good folk of Patterdale and Glenridding would not wish their lake to become Ulls Water, so why has Derwentwater become two words?

On Sunday one of the myriad bits and bobs to fall out of the weighty package that comes with my regular newspaper was a brochure called “Take time to enjoy England” which contained various ideas for 2010 staycationers planning to holiday in this country.

There was a competition to win an adventure break in the Lake District including a visit to “peaceful Derwent Water”. On another page this corruption of the name was repeated when writing about the Camping and Caravanning Club’s Derwent Water site.

It’s been Keswick on Derwentwater ever since I was knee high to a minnow. Late lamented local historian George Bott always called it Derwentwater. I don’t know one local who uses this new two-word image. When they were doing up the area close to the boat landings recently they didn’t call it the Derwent Water Foreshore Project.

I associate Derwent Water with the Derwent reservoir in Durham, or the Derbyshire Derwent. Let’s hope holidaymakers aren’t as confused as the tourist industry seems to be.

BURIED AT SEA

FIFTY years ago the Herald reported that Derwentwater’s lake level had hit a record low and the urban council was to place a plaque on the rocks below Friars Crag to record the fact.

In the intervening years several more markers, some more elaborate than others, have been put there by Keswick’s mayors as new lake lows have been recorded close to the spot where the celebrated meteorologist and geologist Jonathan Otley first scratched lines on the rocks back in the 1800s.

Not much danger of record lows this “barbecue summer.” However, it brings to mind an occasion when I got chatting to two American tourists while surveying the wonderful view from Friars Crag down the lake into the Jaws of Borrowdale.

They had spotted the plaques and wondered what they were. I explained they were placed there by our civic leaders to commemorate changes in Derwentwater’s levels.

Clearly not grasping the explanation, the woman turned to her husband and remarked: “Say, Hymie, isn’t it just so cute. This guy tells me that the city of Kes-Wick buries its mayors at sea!””