Something Rotten

I've not been able to bring myself to read all the details of the torture of the children in Edlington; it's too distressing. And I'm not going to write, here, now, that by itself this horror tells us everything we need to know about the state of Britain today.

But.

Reading the Times this morning I came across this response from Ed Balls, the Children's Secretary (with my emphasis):

It’s really very important that we don’t jump on a bandwagon and allow all groups of children to be demonised. The vast majority of young people should not be smeared by politicians trying to peddle rhetoric about a broken society.

Did I read that right? He's using this distressing story to attack the Conservatives? He thinks there's a move afoot to demonise all 'groups' of children (why 'groups', I wonder?).

'Peddle rhetoric'? That would be the quantitative work undertaken by the Centre for Social Justice which reveals, in eye-watering detail, the consequences of poverty for family life and the routes which lead to that poverty?

'Rhetoric about a broken society'? I know many of you get fed up reading my tales of Hackney life, but Mr Balls is a (second home, naturally) borough neighbour. I can't actually believe, I mean I literally disbelieve, that there is anyone who can walk the streets of Hackney and think that the 'broken society' is empty rhetoric. There are eight headlines on the Hackney Gazette website this morning.... some urban artwork has been defaced by vandals; a new inquest is called on a cell hanging; Hackney is bottom of the SATs scores (again); two girls who robbed a home at knifepoint have been jailed ... and so on.

I love it here and wouldn't live anywhere else, but the good things which make the borough magic (the Saturday market, the rejuvenation of London Fields) happen despite, not because, of the Labour administrations, local and national.

We won't get anywhere while we are ruled by politicians who (1) use any and every occurrence to attack their political opponents (I can't write what I think of Mr Balls for doing that; the Editor would delete my account), and (2) ignore the evidence of their eyes: there is something rotten in the state of Britain. Call it what you like: a lack of communitarianism, a lack of social responsibility, whatever. I think of it as a lack of love. Love is being squeezed to the margins, and in the vacuum left behind only hatred and moral nihilism will flourish.