A prominent Catholic priest at the center of the main rioting area, Ardoyne in north Belfast, said he feared that the latest rioting chiefly reflects the collapse of parental responsibility in local households, not any deep-seated political agenda.
Hospital matters were dealt with by the hospital governor He blames a collapse of clear lines of responsibility among medical and nursing staff for such an erosion of sense of community that aberrations like the Mid Staffordshire hospitals scandal occurred – and may do again.
Of all the jobs in the world, Figueres's may possess the very highest ratio of responsibility (preventing global collapse) to authority (practically none).
Neither major party "has had any sense of responsibility for the collapse of rural economies in the US", he says, adding that the American dream of modestly increasing prosperity "has been stomped on".
The former boss of Royal Bank of Scotland's investment banking arm, Johnny Cameron, today said he is taking his "share of responsibility" for the collapse of RBS and has pledged that he will never run a bank again.
"But the settlement is a clear indication of the scope and extent of responsibility for the collapse on the part of Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff".
But he also admits to "trying to find contributors and thinking of angles" within hours of that tower's collapse, moved, he implies, by a sense of responsibility similar to that which brought police and firemen to Ground Zero.
In the midst of this international collapse of will, the British took responsibility for Helmand in 2006.
And there is mounting support on both sides of the political divide for rethinking social programmes to put more emphasis on personal responsibility.The collapse of the American family is a national tragedy: around 20m children don't live with their fathers, 1m babies a year are born to unwed mothers, 500,000 children are in foster care.
But though the magnitude of the Burmese disaster is clear, one can disagree about whether the British Empire's destruction of the Burmese monarchy and the accompanying collapse of old Burmese society bears direct responsibility for it.
