Anyone can make honest mistakes

WRONG decisions can be taken in good faith but now we attribute blame whenever anything goes awry. Yet all doctors, lawyers, generals – and anyone else who has to make a decision – can do is to use their best judgment. Negligence is always blameworthy but a properly taken decision which proves wrong is often just bad luck.

Thus it was for Pete Richardson, a nurse who took a 111 call from Ann Walters, sent an ambulance but cancelled it when it was only a minute away from her. She died.

Mrs Walters had insisted she wanted to see a doctor, not have an ambulance. She also refused to wake her son. He believed he was complying with her wishes. I wonder how many others would have done the same but it was Mr Richardson’s bad luck to be on duty, to listen to the patient, to follow her wishes and then to find himself suspended when she died.

We have to be more accepting of the obvious truth that human judgment is fallible and all my sympathies are with Mr Richardson.

He should not blame himself.

Common sense and compassion

AT last an old lady of 92 and her family can wake each morning without fear now that the Home Office has finally bowed to pressure and let Myrtle Cothill remain with her daughter instead of being deported to South Africa. It is a pity that compassion and common sense had to be dragged from them instead of being there from the start, but justice eventually prevailed.

Without the Daily Express crusade this old lady would have found immigration enforcement officials on her doorstep a week ago so presumably that is what still happens to other undeserving and defenceless souls. Welcome to Britain in the 21st century.

FOR the first time in my life I received flowers on Mother’s Day. They were from my latest godson Freddy. His parents said: “Well

godmothers are motherish, aren’t they?” What a wonderful

thought.