Then we got a phone call saying we could have him back if we paid $50000 [£27500]

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Then we got a phone call saying we could have him back if we paid $50,000 [£27,500] We didn't have $50,000. Inside the Baghdad morgue, there are so many corpses that the fridges are overflowing The dead are on the floor Dozens of them. Outside, in the 46C (114F) heat, Qadum Ganawi tells me how his brother Hassan was murdered. "He was bringing supper home for our family in Palestine Street but he never reached our home. The smell of the dead pours into the street through the air-conditioning ducts Hot, sweet, overwhelming. As Paul Simon once wrote, you've got to learn how to fall before you learn to fly.terblacker aol More from Terence Blacker. There is a place for risk and danger in our lives, and the sooner children learn that, the better.

But I hope that the Royal Parks authorities will be brave enough not to replace that expensive granite with material that is bouncy and kiddy-friendly, and will allow the water to gush as busily as before, perhaps with a small warning sign to cover themselves against lawsuits. A brain-softening, will-sapping process sets in, leading to a morose fatalistic conviction that there is nothing that the individual can do about the life's big decisions, beyond going for compensation when something goes wrong.Am I reading too much into a malfunctioning water feature? Perhaps. This whittling away of personal responsibility is undoubtedly good news for lawyers, but it is politically harmful, too. Those who expect the state to protect them from life's everyday hazards become, over time, less independent-minded and self-reliant.There is a connection between leaving every small matter of personal safety to regulation-wielding suits in authority and abrogating political responsibility in the same way. The senior bobby who this week launched the Government's pamphlet about terrorism was right when he argued that we have been "weaned away from risk" and, as a result, are more hopeless and helpless in our everyday lives.It has become accepted in our culture that almost every matter of safety is the responsibility of government, or the local council with its health and safety experts.

The Diana Memorial Fountain proves, with every bruise and cut to its visitors, that there is a limit to how cosseted by regulation we should allow ourselves to become. Just as the life of the Princess of Wales exemplified that pain that can exist behind beauty, the memorial fountain would reveal that innocent pleasures can have hidden perils.Public monuments have an odd habit of representing a different, deeper reality than the one which originally lay behind their creation. The Dome, it seems, may now become a giant casino, the perfect symbol for early 21st-century Britain. One is almost tempted to conclude that its architect, Cathryn Gustafson, was making some kind of moralistic point. The swings and slides of civic playgrounds are forever getting smaller, slower and tamer for fear of accidents and law suits.

For those building or converting a property, an ever-lengthening list of building regulations covers every move, providing firm instructions on the acceptable height of electrical sockets, the need for handrails on every flight of stairs, compulsory air-vents in every room, heat regulators on every tap.Under these circumstances, it is a genuine mystery why a public monument largely designed for small children should be quite so hazardous. In my radio review, I included a grim prediction that, within a few days, certain rather painful health and safety issues would emerge.There is something bizarre happening here beyond the fact that a monument to a great lover of children has been cracking open their little heads. As a nation, we have never been more obsessed by regulations to protect ourselves from objects which might just do us harm. Even I, an adult with the agility of a mountain goat, found that I had to take care as I walked. The water which cascaded over artistically corrugated steps of grey Cornish granite provided a highly acceptable paddling experience.It was also, clearly, lethal.