The way we live now

Wales Business — By Duncan Higgitt on September 29, 2009 9:32 am

Hearing the trail for Gordon Brown’s speech to the Labour conference today, it’s easy to wonder how much of it has been considerably rewritten in the past few days.

The Pilkington case is a terrible tragedy and, so we have subsequently learned from the inquest, one that may have been avoided had the police and, to a lesser extent, two local authorites, paid attention to the mother’s repeated pleas for help.

However, to hinge the most crucial speech the Prime Minister will make prior to the election on one case would be wrong. Events that led to the Pilkington deaths were the exception rather than the rule. No doubt Downing Street has been goaded into making more of it by the newspapers which, as usual, want to have their cake and eat it.

But editors that often trip over themselves to accuse the Government of fostering a nanny state cannot very well turn around and say that what happened in Barwell is just another example of Labour’s broken Britain. So what does that mean? That there should be a law against it? Which is it to be, boys?

It is about time the Government – this one and the next – learned to ignore what the papers say. Many have gone from being publishers of record to full-time commentators on the way we live now. And most of the time they are wrong.

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1 Comment

  1. AL says:
    September 29, 2009 at 12:16 pm

    I don’t think that the events that lead to the Pilkington deaths ARE the exception rather than the rule. People have to put up with stuff like that every day.

    You can’t blame the police, they have drug-dealers and rapists to catch.
    You can’t blame the council, aside from asbos and tenancy sanctions what can they do?
    You could blame the street she lived in, but you can’t really blame people for not getting involved: if a neighbour had gone out and told the kids off, the kids would probably have attacked the neighbour, and in defending him/herself the neighbour would have probably been the one up on charges or in prison. The odds are stacked in the favour of the yob committing the offence. (We have to “understand” them maaaannn… no, how about a slap and being dragged home by the ear like old-time bobbies used to?)

    There is no discipline, the only control is the one New Labour have over us NOT dealing with issues like those ourselves. Then they leave a vacuum which then can’t be filled because all the other services are a) too busy to intervene b) not allowed to intervene (not our bailiwick mate)

    I’ll stop now because I’m starting to sound like a Tory Mail reader. eek!

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