think

I haven’t read or listened to the all the reports and comments on Southport,

killings or killer.  I was given pause when a woman friend remarked that “they should have known” something was terribly wrong with the young murderer because of his looks.   I rejoined that we are not all oil paintings.  

What becomes clear as you read intelligent summary of all the agencies involved and the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s own comments is that all these organisations have rules about what they do and don’t do, how far they go – but I wonder how many of them if any have a structure to deal with what they and I hope is the exception – the person they can’t reach, can’t help, who is recalcitrant.   All rehabilitative work relies on a degree of cooperation.  Those who don’t co operate  fall away – and carry on being troublesome.

We used to call people like the Southport killer “mad”.   That’s a three letter four letter word nowadays.   We have all sorts of other explanations, other names for things  – the autistic spectrum  which alongside ADHD is the one we are most likely to hear of, if not to understand. 

But there are a small number of people we are not going to be able to reach.   And what are we going to do with them ?   A jail sentence of 50 years plus is the equivalent of using  prison  as we used to use the madhouse. 

This is not a slur on the quality of care but it is what bothers me.

Dollar to a dime,   the Southport killer has no way back from this.  If you add up the time that has been spent on him  for nearly half his short life – and how much 50 years in jail will cost – that is a public expense,

The idea of losing a child

is horrible, whenever you lose him or her. The parents of the three little girls who died,  their families and friends, the other children who were injured, their families and friends, emergency services, people who tried to help,  every kind of witness has suffered.   And  because  it is widely agreed that Southport has  rallied to its best – from immediately after the event and on – it is easy – may be preferable –  to forget the weight of these questions.

And at least some of the background to this is that more and more people see destructive violence online 

– small paragraph buried inside the newspaper – so we have to posit two  questions: why do they watch it, and what effect does it have ?    and we know more about the second question that we do about the first – the flip answer being  I suppose, because we can.  Though then we have to ask  – why ?  

I am a bad example because I am a very limited user of the internet.   I bless it when it is useful   I look up films, directors, people of interest, their backgrounds, occasionally artists and all sorts of information – but hunched over a screen  showing me horrible  destruction and how to cut off an ear is not where you would find me. 

I think social media should be destroyed.  

  I remember enough of the trolls when they sat in audiences – I don’t want  them in my home or on my screen, the screen incidentally which is not mine and belongs of one of technocrats and they  interfere with it to a degree that makes me foam.

I know the world  is not made up of sunshine and  flowers.    People are horrid to each other in every forum from the kitchen table to international political war ( see Mao “War is politics with blood and politics is war without blood”) – indeed sometimes they seem to look for  excuses to be horrid to each other.   Love does not conquer all but it certainly helps.  Hence the battle I have with myself every week about  wanting to acknowledge and thank everybody who has supported and endorsed me and the work in progress known as annalog   If we really support  change  we are going to have to think about  these  uncomfortable questions.   Forgive ?  Yes.  Forget ? never.