give hate a chance

An inquest has just ended which has recorded the death not just of a beleagered mother and her disabled child, but of the liberal-socialist axis' fixation with the language of therapy and softly-softly justice.

On October 23, 2007, Fiona Pilkington and her daughter Francecca Hardwick, bullied to distraction by the Simmons family in Barwell, Leicestershire, died when the mother turned her car into a funeral pyre.

Starting in November 1997, Mrs Pilkington kept a diary of the abuse heaped upon her by a gang of feral children which preyed upon their estate, the ringleaders being the offspring of Steven and Suzanne Simmons, the latter even now defending her murderous brood - Alex, Michael, Charlie and Ross - by saying the abuse was "nothing to kill yourself over".

Being a resident of a housing association where housing officers have threatened decent tenants with eviction over grass being allowed to grow too long while constructing flimsy excuses to keep a roof over the heads of the most abusive and sociopathic elements on the estate, I can see how this has happened: social(ist) concerns are full of support and excuses for people who have no respect for themselves and less for others, while viewing those who scratch a living on lower wages than benefits would allow with disdain.

It's not purely a New Labour phenomenon. In the mid-70s in Glasgow, the powers that be decided to move the most pathogenic families in the city into one street, having made the aprioristic conclusion that they'd be forced to play nice. The opposite happened, and honest, decent Glaswegians are still paying the price.

But Labour has made patronising society's enemies into high art. For example, Ian Wathey and Craig Faunch, homosexual foster carers for Wakefield (West Yorkshire) council, systematically abused children between 2003 and 2005. Social workers who reported concerns were told by managers that they were putting their careers in jeopardy.

Another case is that of a Cambridgeshire consultant I know who decided he could cure paedophilia and had a paedophile moved out of prison into a ward - next door to a primary school - where he tried to change the beast's tastes from child to adult pornography, thus ensuring that not only every child but every woman in the neighbourhood was at risk. I'm able to report that he was eventually returned to prison after staff protests grew so loud they could no longer be ignored.

This morning, the Telegraph's Andrew Porter reported Home Secretary Alan Johnson as saying that the Government has "coasted" on anti-social behaviour and that it "could be more 'consistent' in its application of measures against problem families". Full marks for Mr Johnson for contrition, which is often the refuge of the morally vacuous after the fact, but zero for being so unperspicacious that he hasn't noticed what's going on beneath his distant tower for 12 years. (Possibly he's only speaking on the issue because lawyer Richard Perks failed to persuade Coroner Olivia Davison from banning press reportage of the case.)

In his speech to the Labour Party Conference, which will be the last before the next election, Gordon Brown has announced he will bring in "family intervention projects" - which he first announced in 2006, and whose "success" the government's webpage on the subject was lauding last year. It's amazing how an impending election concentrates the mind.

The title in the afore-linked webpage says it all - "respect" - and indeed Johnson has referred to the Family Intervention Projects as "tough love". Personally, I've had enough of one-way love and respect for scum who are trying their hardest to destroy my way of life, and who indeed have destroyed the lives of Fiona Pilkington and her daughter.

It's perhaps time for some old-fashioned hate - hate for bullying, hate for thuggery and hate for skewed structures rewarding careerists who let these thrive virtually unchallenged in society. Johnson says we need the police to be able to identify victims - true, but Government needs to return to the police the means to react robustly towards antisocial behaviour, not reward its proponents with ASBOs and antisocial behaviour contracts. The reintroduction of the noose might also be rather therapeutic for society.

May God have mercy on the souls of Fiona Pilkington and Francecca Hardwick. And on ours, as we try to identify the means by which we can rid our decent society of its enemies.