Claude, with the greatest respect for you and your writing, and in the knowledge that I agree with the principles of what’s being said here, this is actually in pretty fucking poor taste.

Agreed.

What Penny said — this is Moir-esque in its timing.

The core point is good, but badly made, and I really don’t think the partisan attack on IDS (no matter how much I may dislike him and his party) helps in the least. There’s a very valid point to be made about which crimes attract media attention and which don’t, but this isn’t the way to do it. The post linked at “Yesterday I wrote about a similarly disturbing case” is much better.

It that really the best you can do, is that really how low you can go ?

here is a idea , the system should not penalise you for being married as it does now .

The most stable system of child rearing we have found is marriage , no it is not perfect , but on any measure , it gives abetter outcome for the child, the woman and the man , and the wider society.

The alternative is what we have now , were the state acts as the father, effectivly making the man reduntant.

If you cannot see the around you the effect on society this attack on family that has taken place over the last 20 years has had then you are a fool ( as proved by your article )

We in britain top the league in single parents ( a good trick linking those who at a young age get pregnent and straight on the social for life and those who end up divorced ) and underage pregnacy.

And before to denounce me as right winger , I speak as someone bought up on a council housing estate, state educated and in social housing.

I’ll take responsibility for the poorly worded headline (changed now) – but I don’t think its in the realms of bad taste to ask how a Tory policy of trying to encourage families to stay together through taxes would have prevented incidents such as these tagged as ‘Broken Britain’.
Jan Moir-esque? Really? Who is the hate directed at here?

It’s perfectly normal that you find the way this was written disturbing. It’s exactly the reverse of what you find on every tabloid front page each time similar tragedies happen around council estates or amongst less affluent people. The relentless bombardment and point scoring that follows is vile. Shame the paradox didn’t come across.

PS I didnt do the editing/merging of the two posts BTW.

The problem, Sunny, is that that question is hardly asked, and it isn’t answered except vaguely. Nowhere in the piece is it explicitly said ‘stupid tax policies will not prevent a certain number of individual, horrible cases like these’ – in fact, someone entirely behind Cameron’s tax policies could read the first part of the article without picking up on the sarcasm. Is Claude implying that the couple’s recent divorce was a motivating factor in the alleged killing, or that it wasn’t, or that it was but IDS’ tax policies wouldn’t have helped? What precisely is the point he’s trying to make at the end about child killers and relative wealth? It’s all a confused muddle, not to mention irresponsible as hell, as the case in question is still ongoing.

All this, and the fact that the events themselves are not treated with the gravity they deserve, means that the piece reads as if Claude is sneering at these tragedies, whilst using them to make a sloppy point about how rubbish the Tories are. This contributes nothing to the debate, and paints LibCon in a poor light.

It concerns me, because I want to see standards in the Liberal blogosphere kept high right up until the election and beyond, and it’s this sort of thing that gives us a bad name.

Ah, two posts were merged? That explains why it makes very little sense. I’d like to see them in full.

But Claude – this case, the case with the wealthy alleged killer, was ****on the front page of the Sun yesterday****. Horrible murders make the headlines whoever committed them! I’m sorry, but you’re just wrong here.

I think the core points could have been made much better like this:

1. The Tories seem to think that marriage is always good, ergo marriage must be encouraged via the tax system.

2. But we now have a shocking and tragic example of the fact that marriage isn’t always good. Sometimes it’s terrible, and the best thing is for the people involved to get divorced. Perhaps in this case, the tragic deaths of two young children might have been averted. But perhaps not. The case is a tragedy all round.

3. But what it shows is that marriage is a complex thing, and that a) tax breaks are unlikely to make the difference when a marriage is going badly, and b) marriage sometimes isn’t a good thing.

But the Tory plans thus look incoherent: tax breaks won’t keep troubled couples together, and the Tory idea that marriage needs to be “recognised” in the tax system is blind to cases when marriage is not a good thing.

Unfortuntely, however, these perfectly valid points are somewhat overshadowed by the horror of the case under discussion. As Laurie says, the net result is to make it appear that the deaths of two children are being put to use to score a partisan point against the Tories. In turn, the partisan point looks trivial, caluous and insensitive.

In sum: sneering at incoherent Tory proposals is one thing; sneering at them via the context of two dead children is quite another.

Bad call, I’m afraid.

And I wonder how long until the backlash at Dale, Guido etc begins….

Laurie: if Claude’s point is that the alleged killer who is wealthy doesn’t draw claims that this is evidence of “Broken Britain” and general “chav”-hate, then I think he has a point.

But again, the point is small and weighed against the case in question, not worth making.

Sunny H

a Tory policy of trying to encourage families to stay together through taxes

But that isn’t the Tory policy. That’s just the way it is misrepresented by Labour.

The purpose of the proposed tax break is not to paper over the cracks of failing relationships. It is to provide due recognition of an important social institution that has existed across many cultures for thousands of years. Instead of penalizing it, as is the case now.

This woman who is alleged to have killed her children had lost her husband and, owing to Labour’s incompetent economic stewardship, her job. She is reported to have also lost another child in a cot death.

I see nothing in her situation that should give rise to the gleeful cackling in this blog post.

If this is how Liberal Conspiracy behaves towards an unemployed lone parent, you really have lost your moral compass.

Just because she was middle-class doesn’t mean she deserves it.

If this is the “class war” you’ve been advocating, it stinks.

In sum: sneering at incoherent Tory proposals is one thing; sneering at them via the context of two dead children is quite another.

And doing so so soon after criticising the Tories for ‘politicising’ the Doncaster murders looks a bit shit as well.

Yes – I think the best way to combat the ids of IDS would be to say “statistics show…“, not “extreme outlier implies…“.

Incidentally, I can’t believe that the Tories say “marriage is always good“. I’m no fan of Poppin’ Fresh, but isn’t is closer to “marriage is generally the best state of affairs“?

Agreed with most comments here.
Claude has good points, poorly made. Leaves a bad taste lingering. P’raps sarcasm wasn’t the best mode of communicating the point? I dunno. W/ever, murders should not be political footballs, kicked around to make a point. Either by right-whingers (“broken Britain/devil boys”) or liberal-lefties (“look, rich people can be sick fuckers too!”).

@Ray and Flowerpower:

In what way is marriage penalized at present?

Thanks.

Feckless bastards, more evidence of broken Britain. What can we do prevent such greedy bastards from breeding! Obviously she was too busy making money to look after her kids. These children were obviously just accessories, when the marriage fell apart, the kids were simply discarded, etc, etc etc.

The serious point of course being that all over the Tory rags such stories make headline news and Right Wing politicians threw their oar in for a bit of fun, just as long it is on council estates.

Whatever happens this woman’s lifestyle will never be put under the microscope they way, say, Shannon Mathews’ mother’s life was. The poor on sink estates are never ‘under pressure’ or their life never ‘falls apart’. There is never any mitigation for a ‘home alone’ family that crop up.

We will never see the forensic unpicking of the family life of this woman; we will never read in lurid detail how many lovers she had or any drug use she has indulged in, the motivation for having these kids or any trends established, because when the middle class go postal, nothing could have prevented it. There will be no ‘baby P’ column inches for these children, no vilification of social workers, no rows of photographers encamped outside the doors of this dysfunctional family.

Rest in peace children, that is more than baby ‘P’ got.

This is appalling.

Cameron was rightly vilified here and almost everywhere else for attempting to make political capital from a horrific crime, but this is worse.

All of the tragedies mentioned are just that. Bloody awful tragedies and they are unrelated to class or politics. To try to make political capital from the death of two toddlers is just fucking barbarous.

Get some perspective, Sunny, and take this maggot of a post down.

marriage is penalized .
if you are married the welfare system penalises you massivly .

and befor you attack this as untrue , I have learnt this from bitter personal experience.

regards

Ray

Oh, pagar – the defender of free speech and liberalism – is back.

It is to provide due recognition of an important social institution that has existed across many cultures for thousands of years. Instead of penalizing it, as is the case now.

How is marriage being penalised?

And doing so so soon after criticising the Tories for ‘politicising’ the Doncaster murders looks a bit shit as well.

Rather stupid comment – because at least this post doesn’t blame the Tories for these horrible murders.

It quite rightly asks what Tory policy would have done in order to prevent it.

@ray

I’m not attacking, I’m just curious. What sort of action does the the welfare system take against married couples?

Thanks.

How is marriage being penalised?

Sunny, in my view the Tories are absolutely wrong in talking about giving tax breaks to married couples. To me, that is social engineering and I want none of it from either side.

But that is irrelevant.

What is relevant is that it would seem, a woman, for whatever reason, found herself in such a state of emotional distress that she killed her own children. To try to use that to score a cheap political point is ….well barbarous.

Please. I’ll ask nicely and promise never to wind DHG up again.

Please, take it down.

“It quite rightly asks what Tory policy would have done in order to prevent it.”

But Sunny, the Tory policy does not claim that marriage tax breaks will stop tragedies happening. The Tories reckon it will encourage more stability and help kids have better lives on average

I’ve pointed out ad nauseum that this is bollocks. But I’ve never pretended that the Tories think their tax plans are a magic bullet to prevent exceptional tragedies in a population of 60million. If we’re going to attack, let’s do it properly and not put the ball into our own net.

I mean, come on. We can’t just put straw men up in order to burn them down.

Alternatively, if the line being taken is: “Oh Cameron wanted to make out that the Tories would have stopped the Edlington attacks, but how would his tax policies have stopped with tragedy?!” well that’s just “yeah but he said that she said that he said” level childishness. Sure, what Cameron implied last week stank – but it’s frankly silly to imply that the Tories are claiming their tax policies will prevent murder. Because they’re not saying that.

For once (actually it might be the second time) I agree with Laurie.

I’ve only just joined the thread so I didn’t see the original heading but could it really have been worse?

Blaming the Tories for this if they were in power would be ridiculous enough – and I’ve argued on an earlier thread New Labour shouldn’t bare the blame for Doncaster either, so don’t go there: exceptional cases are *exceptional* – but to attack them based on speculation about what would or would not have happenned if they *were* in charge adds a whole new level of idiocy.

Maybe this is what Sunny meant yesterday by ‘more partisan’?

Hmmm. I think Laurie has made the case pretty well here that this is an inappropriate article.

I think the attempt to link it to David Cameron’s comments on the Doncaster assualt is odd as well. Were social services involved in this family? Were they known to the police? Unless you know more than I do, no. So this was a tradegy in a family. These happen, and nothing will stop them. So political point scoring here is not only morally wrong, but not even the same issue. Frankly I am surprised this was posted at a site which regularly points out the moral and factual inadequacy of tabloid journalism. It is sinking to that level on both counts.

What is relevant is that it would seem, a woman, for whatever reason, found herself in such a state of emotional distress that she killed her own children. To try to use that to score a cheap political point is ….well barbarous.

But I don’t think it is trying to score a cheap political point – your professed dedication to free speech and liberalism sort of fall apart the minute you read something you don’t like.

Some people find the piece in bad taste – and actually I’m in favour of closing comments because it seems no one wants to discuss the actual point but just say how outraged they are.

There are two points to the blog post. The first is to ask how Tory policy explains such blatant problems where the breakdown of family happens regardless of tax policy and has no impact on people’s behaviours.

Secondly – it is about media reporting of such cases and the media bias towards cases that complain Britain is Broken by demonising poor people. Would an article written 10 weeks later be better?