"Good Samaritan" Law

Last night I listened to a programme on Radio 4 on law - "Unreliable Evidence" - which examined the case for establishing a "Good Samaritan" law in England.  This law would enable people to be prosecuted if they failed to help someone in distress. It was an interesting discussion and I thought the case for the law was a no brainer, but others thought it unnecessary.

Then the case of the death of a toddler in China was raised and it was the most horrific thing I have ever heard.  Caught on CCTV camera a two year old child wanders into the middle of a street in a market place and is run over by a van.  As she lies on the ground crying and holding her head passers by ignore her.  A second van then drives over her and fails to stop, and still she is ignored.  In total 18 people pass by. Eventually a woman street cleaner goes over to the child and drags her to the side - seconds later the distraught mother arrives.

Here is the video.  It is HORRIFIC.  If you watch it the images will haunt you - you have been warned. No need to watch - the facts speak for themselves.  The write up of the incident and what happened is written up in Wiki




So what does this say? Should those people be prosecuted? What happened to harden their hearts to this extent?  Are any of us capable of acting in the same way?  These are all migrant workers - no sense of community, no commonality, no sense of responsibility to those outside your own sphere. Is there anywhere in the UK where this could happen?

A few years ago I made a programme on the death of Baby P, beaten a tortured to death, no one helped, in fact a lodger helped hide the evidence.  Is that so different?

After the horror of the last couple of weeks in Paris and Nigeria - and elsewhere - it is easy to sink into despair.  Are we really so callous about our fellow travellers on earth?  If so why? Some blame the increasing use of technology that is insidiously turning the world from a place of wonder and potential to a human designed resource that fits exactly our needs and ignores our craving for delight and unpredictability and mystery.  When this happens our senses are increasingly numbed.  Living in crowded, money driven places where the aim is to amass wealth overrides simple human decency.

I wonder if a law would really help?  It may make us feel better after the event that something has happened to the people involved, but would it have stopped it in the first place? Who knows, but this terrible case in China must NEVER happen again.

Is it only humans that experience emotions?

It is high time we stopped batting off the difficult and potentially highly inconvenient questions around animal sentience. Let's just recognise that life other than humans have feelings and emotions says Mark Bekoff from the University of Colorado at Boulder.  Very true says Christine Nicol from Bristol University, who is applying animal behaviour to our treatment of livestock.  She has already made big improvements to the lives of chickens by helping formulate the recent legislation for higher standards which took account of her research.  Hens, after all, are domesticated junglefowl with many of their original instincts and behaviours, to ignore them is downright cruel.


    Commercial free-range hens indoors

There is a tangible move in some spheres (nowhere near enough though) towards living in a kinder, more compassionate world.  I am very glad, the pain caused by a cold us and them approach to life on earth is reaching desperate proportions as meat eating soars and more and more animals live short, brutal lives for our plates.  I am not against meat eating by any means (my family eats meat) but I find I am increasingly anxious about the way we treat life on earth - domesticated and wild.

What research is increasingly showing is that we are not that different from our furry and feathery fellow travellers.  We are not the only species to feel empathy, grief, affections, bonding, trauma, distress, pain, depression, joy etc.  As the evidence piles up I hope it filters through to the rest of us in society.  We need to hear these things, we need to be able to let this extraordinary and challenging research seep into our thought processes and help guide what we buy and what we eat.  Human beings are complex creatures and it takes time for us to change our ways, but the more we can identify with other life, the easier it will be to push through meaningful reforms.

I love the idea that a chicken can display delayed gratification, can recognise and react to distress in other hens and can communicate with their chicks while they are still in the egg.  My forthcoming book on John Muir gives examples of how he recognised that farm animals have similar feelings to us.

Tim Birkhead, Professor of Animal Behaviour at Sheffield told me recently that it is time for the science of ethology to look at emotions more carefully.  He believes the stage has been reached where this is no longer a taboo.  His study of guillemots on Skomer (the subject of a Living World on Aug 17th, 6.40 am) has convinced him these long-lived, communal birds who form life-long partnerships feel real affection for each other.

Science is challenging the long-held notions about what it is to be human and it seems theological research is a couple of hundred years behind the times.  Religion is too important to the way the world works for it to carry on as though ideas on what constitutes a human being has never changed.  It has and continues to present new aspects at an increasingly fast rate.  Fascinating and challenging ideas are arriving thick and fast and the world's faiths and would do well to consider them.

Child Abuse Justice - At Last

It has taken this long for the law to realise that adults who seriously inflict injury on children have to be prosecuted?  On Monday those who stay silent will now be prosecuted.  Up till now if a couple are arrested for hurting children, unless the police can PROVE which one did the hitting then they can't bring charges.  Thousands of abusers have walked free.  Why has it taken this long to change the law?  I despair.  But at least on Monday no one can get away with it anymore.

I was deeply affected by the horror of Baby P.  One of the 3 jailed for his murder - and it was murder - is now free, the lodger.  The mother will be released very soon if her sentence of 5 years is adhered to (only 5 years?)  Maybe she's out already.

I was so moved by this case that I wrote 200 letters, went to Tottenham to the house where Baby P died and posted the letters by hand to the surrounding houses asking if any neighbours would speak to me about what it was like to be next to such abuse.  1 family replied.  This is the programme I made, it features a poem written by Miles Chambers specially for the programme and an interview with a local Bristol lady who lives next door to a family who she thinks may be hurting their children.  I met Yvonne whilst filming hedgehogs in her garden (she runs a sanctuary for injured hedgehogs).  We had to stop filming because of the screaming mother and terrified cries of the children next door.

Baroness Scotland was asked to review the sentences passed on those who murdered Peter Connolly - they seemed so lenient for the mother and lodger - but she said they were fair and upheld them.  I wonder why she thought that?

Just Around the Corner by Curlewmedia