Edlington case is symptom of 'broken society', says David Cameron | UK news | guardian.co.uk
The local authority began this drama by apologising for its failings. This was both a political statement and an exoneration of every other human being who touched the lives of the young sadists' family. If the reliably incompetent state is responsible for their conduct, then no-one else is. Never mind that "the local community" is tough enough to run them out of town now. They were not tough enough to intervene in the horrors of the boys' upbringing. No, that was up to Social Services, as the council sadly confirms.
Enter David Cameron, stage right. Beneath the fresh, fabric softened woolliness of his lines is the muffled echo of a standard right-wing point. These boys were the inevitable products of welfarism. Bred merely to maximise state benefits, they were unwanted and unloved. No care was taken over their welfare or education nor even to screen them from their parents' vile lives. They grew up, poor creatures, looking on. And they learned, as children will, from their role models. Their outré, Tarantino-like violence is therefore really no surprise.
The left-wing characters in this drama have yet to make their entrances. But there are noises off. The BBC and Guardian accounts mention the horror movies and the pornography meaningfully, without yet seeking to blame them directly. One account (from the BBC) says;
"...the two brothers made their own horror movie..."
Ho hum. Perhaps the trendy QT, purveyor of amusing violence to the intelligentsia, will have a job for them on their release? Once the initial horror has abated, however, a dancing line of Guardianistas will take to the footlights for the finale. And the prescience of a slave in ancient Greece will be proved once again.
A great city was besieged and its inhabitants were called together to consider the best means of protecting it from the enemy. A bricklayer earnestly recommended bricks as affording the best material for an effective resistance. A carpenter, with equal enthusiasm, proposed timber... Upon which a currier stood up and said, "Sirs, I differ from you altogether; there is no material for resistance equal to a covering of hides; and nothing so good as leather.
The Tory solution will be less welfare. The Labour solution will be more. The Tories will tell us the social workers failed. Labour will tell us that if they were better paid, more expensively trained and more numerous, such horrors could be avoided. The puritans on both sides will blame the likes of Quentin Tarantino for de-sensitising children never sensitised in the first place. The right will seek to ban violent movies and the left (if intellectually consistent) will seek to set a minimum price for horror movie rentals so that only the rich (already lost to morality) can be exposed to their sickening influence.
Finally a chorus of legislators will tell us that new laws will prevent a recurrence. And the curtain will go down on the whole cast bowing before a backdrop of the gleaming city of our collective conscience. Encircled, of course, by a useless leather wall. The drama will have been satisfying though, and the political classes will conceal behind masks of impeccably concerned sadness, just how much they enjoyed their own performances.
