Polly Toynbee makes the quixotic points one would expect her to make about Baby P:

Surprisingly few children are murdered, given how many parents are drug addicted, psychotic, violent or profoundly inadequate; 29,000 are on the child protection register and another 300,000 are reckoned to be "in need", with concerns about their quality of life.

Yet last year of all those children in danger, 68 were killed (15 of those by strangers). Given how extraordinarily vulnerable children are, that is a relatively low figure to be balanced against the thousands who survive precarious lives, often thanks to social workers, who are never thanked.

More interesting are the many comments by readers, including this stiring one:

No. I actually used to be a Civil Servant. Trust me, the issue is not stress or pay or popularity. The problem is demoralisation.

Everyone in the Civil Service knows that they are less competent than their Parents’ generation much less their grandparents. Everyone knows that they pretend to pay us so we pretend to work. Everyone knows that promotion is a reward for mediocrity and sucking up. Everyone knows no matter how little interest or competence they bring to the job, as long as they tick the boxes, as long as they keep their noses clean and spout the usual Management rubbish, their promotion prospects will not be harmed.

It demoralises people to know they are all faking it and not really working. Sacking a few people would inspire the rest – and give them a sense of achievement for surviving.

Sounds good to me.

If good behaviour is not rewarded, and poor behaviour results in adequate consequences, standards surge downwards.

With the results we see everywhere around us.

Simple enough, one might think, even for the Guardian.