Declarations and u-turns

(Image from Wikipedia website)
Yesterday, Jack Straw announced that the rule he introduced that required Judges to say publicly whether they were Masons would be scrapped - see here for a Guardian report on this story.

Apparently, he is reported to have said that "existing safeguards, such as the oath, the availability of a complaints procedure and the independent appointments commission, were enough to support "the proper performance of judicial functions"."

Wasn't that also true 12 years' ago? I suspected at the time that this was a sop to politics rather than a real effort to improve things or deal with a problem that actually existed outside the minds of conspiracy theorists ...

Having had this welcome u-turn, can we please have a u-turn on the registers of interests for unpaid parish councillors? While you at it, can we also get rid of the ISA and start having systems that place responsibility back on individuals and employers, please?

The irony of having CRB checked employees of a nursery convicted of some hideous crimes at the same time it was being reported that 2 police women were being threatened with proceedings if they continued their informal childcare arrangements without what officialdom described as 'adequate checks' was not lost on me ...