"Lessons have been learned" usually means "we have invented another form to fill in".

"I apologise for..." Well that's all right then. Slavery, aborigines, Red Indians, letting murderers go free to kill again, wrecking the economy etc etc etc. Do what you want, foul up as big as you want but as long as you apologise, that's all right.

just once to see some honesty, you know, someone who had the balls to say..

'society, including all its inherent problems, is beyond our complete control. no procedure is foolproof. whatever we do, sh*t is going to happen somewhere, to someone, sometimes by accident, sometimes through malice, sometimes through incompetence. when it does, we'll deal with it as best we can, attempt to minimise the consequences, and attempt to ensure that a similar thing happens infrequently in the future. but utopias don't exist.'

lessons can be learned. course they can. and people who say it are just trying to calm everyone down in the immediate aftermath (as well as trying to divert attention from any possible blame)but to suggest that these lessons will eventually lead to a state where everything always works, well...

people are often at fault, of course. but to publicly apportion blame before due legal process would be a rash, knee-jerk, redtop reaction (see Hillsborough and the 'hooligans stealing from the dead' copy of the next day). the whole 'lessons will be learned' thing comes from 24 hour media coverage when a spokesman is asked about an incident and they have to say something, anything. what else could they say - 'yeah, such-and-such really f***** up there, sorry, we've sacked them. here's their phone number, and name and address, feel free to put together a lynch mob'

so, we leave the platitudes about learned lessons to the mouthpieces who sit like rabbits in the headlights in tv studios, and the mindless masses who should know better than to expect balanced, insightful, clearthinking comment from a media obsessed with the immediate, the 'now' of news.

blame, retribution, punishment, wahtever - it needs to be private, and done with due dilligence.

"mistakes were made" is another classic cop-out - usually from someone high up the management chain who should really say "we made mistakes".

I remember an English teacher berating anybody who would use passive voice unless for deliberate stylistic effect. Otherwise, he used say, it was as if you were trying to distance yourself from an opinion or belief.

Such sentences as 'lessons have been learned' are incomplete unless they say just WHO has learned the lesson. The point above that sometimes the finger pointing needs to be done in a considered, measured manner means that the half sentence shouldn't be uttered at all in public and a completely different response given.

'We'll take some positives from that, regroup tomorrow and move on'. If I had a pound for every time I've heard that after some or other team's ignominious capitulation I wouldn't have been forlornly clicking around moneysupermarket.com this morning.

which is proactively outcomes-driven in a context of exchanging experiences, that calls problems "opportunities", and massive, festering cock-ups "issues".

...should be confined to commerce and industry. When actual lives are at stake then no internal market forces or trusts trying to score brownie points for the next grant or bonus - should prevail.
Shit happens and mistakes will be made but lessen the impact by having enough properly trained, experienced people doing the actual job with proper equipment. When the bean counters get involved they will squeeze and squeeze and eventually the thing will burst.
Those caught in the glare of media spotlights are trying to soften the blow because they pushed the system too hard and know the shit should hit the fan.

In part as it has become assumed to be a universal panacea and has thus been, conceptually, devalued. Counselling is a difficult art to learn and to practise. There are few up to it, despite the many professing to be capable of offering.
I also dislike the smug BBC continuity voice, "if you have been distressed by the content of this programme........." phone up our premium phone line (local rate apart from mobiles, which is all people use, it seems, nowadays) and speak to, hey, a counsellor!!!

The word "robust" is regularly mangled by spokespersons these days.

And is any sentence ever improved or given greater meaning when featuring the word "proactive"? I can't think of an occasion where that would be the case...

...When is the time for finger-pointing ?

We're just trying to please computers. So says Mary Dejevsky in this very relevant article from The Independent:
http://tinyurl.com/c456l5