Simon Marcombe replies to Dave's letter questioning the integrity of Ronald Taylor, the Director of Children's Services. 

It is strange how these people operate.  I don't detect any ill-intent in this letter but it is strange how he seems to feign innocence.  This letter focuses on the apparent letter dated the 9 September referred to in Ronald Taylor's letter of 26 October to Simon Marcombe.  That was probably a simple mistake by Ronald Taylor and he probably meant to refer to the letter dated 16 September.  But in this letter Simon suggests (by implication) that Ronald may have meant to refer to his letter of 1 September.  But if you read the content, the reference was clearly not to the letter of 1 September.  And, worse, Dave's letter raising this "question" specifically points to the letter dated 16 September as having a piece of the contradictory information.

So it is almost as if Simon deliberately wants to obfuscate the whole matter.  The most likely explanation seems to be that he is not paying attention.  But not paying attention could be described as a sort of unconscious intent to avoid the issue and, being in a position of responsibility and appearing to pay attention, that is tantamount to deliberate obfuscation.

SIMON MARCOMBE, M.P. Member of Parliament for Biston and Bogey Mr D Hook 80 Haslet Road Biston Sumshire AZ1 1ZA HOUSE OF COMMONS LONDON, SWIA OAA 18 November 2011 Dear Mr Hook I write to acknowledge receipt of your letter dated 7 November 2011, in which you raise your further concerns regarding the Children's Social Services. I note your comments with regard to Mr Taylor's letter dated 26 October 2011, in which he refers to a letter that was sent to my office dated 9 September 2011. I do not have a record of a letter dated 9 September 2011 but I did receive a letter dated 1 September 2011, which was sent to you with a covering letter dated 5 September. I have however written to Mr Taylor for clarification as to whether this was in fact the letter he was referring to and asking for his comments in response to your letter of 7 November 2011. Once I receive his reply, I will revert to you in due course. Yours sincerely Simon Marcombe MP Biston and Bogey

A little philosophical consideration:

It seems that part of what is happening is that the mode of operation of these people in authority is to continue to break the problem down into ever smaller pieces.  Eventually they can pick up piece after piece and declare that each and every one is insignificant.  In other words, in this case in particular, the debate is going to become about a typo.  This evades the real crime.

A person is a person and as such is important and valuable.  And a person is specifically made up of molecules.  But not one molecule is significant in itself.  Any single molecule could be removed and the "person" would still exist in their totality for the purposes of being that person.  The same applies to the amazingly complex cells that make up a human.  But if one cell mutates and becomes cancerous then removing that cell could save the life of the person.  So there are individual cells that can have a catastrophic and destructive significance to the person.

By diminishing the importance of Dave's individual complaints they are effectively supporting and even nurturing the "cancerous" abuse that is the "whole" subject.