'The Daily Mail' and the Philpott case

Considering the issues that surround the case of Mick & Mairead Philpott they're living situation, he fathered 17 children with at least 3 different women and lives off the state. And not to mention how he has now been portrayed in the media as a violent, controlling, domineering, somewhat misogynistic sex addict. Coming up with an angle for this thread would be somewhat easy ~ Right? No. I am sat here trying to think of a few key issues that could start the thread moving, instead all I can think about is the 6 dead children whose Parents are now about to be sentenced for their murders, after being found guilty of Manslaughter.

The Daily Mail has very quickly jumped on this, on today's front page they have the headline "VILE PRODUCT OF THE WELFARE STATE" quick off the mark to use him as the poster child to support their conservative ideology, of dismantling the welfare system, but are they wrong? Not to be mistaken, by my own view on this, I see the Daily Mail as despicable for using the deaths of 6 children to hang their hat on this to support their views.
However Mick Philpott has completely bastardized a system that in its intention was designed to help those in society; and in doing so has left the entire system wide open and even more vulnerable. With the next round of cuts being made by the current government becoming effective now, is this a way draw attention to a system that needs radical change to stop it from being exploited to this extent in future? Skywalker in another thread Taking sides: the dividing lines of British politics has posted facts and figures that discredit the tory spin on the welfare bill. So perhaps these children dying at the hands of their own parents stupidity and lack of reason, wont be in vain. As Parties line up to generate support for either side of the welfare bill argument perhaps remembering that at the crux is 6 children, had to die before this was made apparent and now some middle ground should be found instead of pushing personal bigoted viewpoints.

My complaint to the PCC is already in about the Mail's article. The disregard for the impact on the surviving children, not to mention the increased likelihood of attacks on innocent-but-demonised benefit claimants, is nothing short of criminal.

Against any other group it would be a hate-crime, and prosecutable - but benefit-claimants are seemingly fair game.

Leveson appears to have been "spiked". (Falls back in surprise)

That a picture of you, OW?

I think this is one of the most despicable pieces of so-called journalism that I’ve ever read:-

'Michael Philpott is a perfect parable for our age: His story shows the pervasiveness of evil born out of welfare dependency' by A. N. Wilson

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2303071/Michael-Philpott-perfect-parable-age.html

‘The Daily Mail’ does have a reputation to keep down. When Lord Rothermere was in charge of the paper, it published a forged letter four days before the 1924 general election which ensured that Labour lost by a landslide. Rothermere was a friend of both Mussolini and Hitler, and he directed the paper’s editorial stance towards them in the 1930s. He predicted that "the minor misdeeds of individual Nazis would be submerged by the immense benefits the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany". Rothermere also supported Oswald Mosley in Britain for a while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail

In recent weeks, this disgusting paper has seen Richard Littlejohn giving unwarranted publicity to a Lancashire teacher who had undergone a sex change operation, even questioning her suitability to teach. The teacher was so distressed about the publicity that she committed suicide.

Next came Peter Hitchens, with an inflammatory article about East Europeans in Boston (the Lincolnshire one!) and talk of an “invasion of immigrants” to “every corner of England”, absurdly suggesting that “we’re all adapting to their lifestyle”. I haven’t started using the Cyrillic alphabet, have you?

Then we come to the author of the above article about Philpott. A. N. Wilson, who has written many books, is an oddball. First he was planning to be ordained as a Church of England minister, but then he became an atheist. In 2009 he became a Christian again, but in his appalling ‘Daily Mail’ article about Philpott this week, he criticises the Church for its opposition to Iain Duncan Smith’s “much needed benefit reforms”. It’s interesting that he refers to Philpott in terms of a ‘parable’. Maybe Wilson will be an atheist again by next week, who knows? Who cares?

Some years ago I read ‘Paul – The Mind Of The Apostle’, written during Wilson’s atheist days. I was impressed by his painstaking research, attention to detail and attempts to place stories recorded in the New Testament in the context of provable historical events. I was, therefore, shocked to read his piece of gutter journalism about Philpott, which contains unsubstantiated claims like “versions of the Philpott family can be found in any town in Britain”. Really? Every town has people with 17 children who set fire to their homes while the youngsters are sleeping?

Wilson repeats that filthy Tory lie about “families languishing on benefits for generations”, when, apart from the Windsor family, there’s no evidence whatsoever to support it. He claims there are “tens of thousands of welfare benefit scroungers”, but produces no facts or figures to back up that monstrous slur. He compares figures from 1951, which don’t include pensions, with those from 2011/12, which do. As there are far more people over retirement age now than in 1951, and as they are living longer, it’s hardly surprising that the cost of pensions continues to escalate, and with it the welfare bill. The Department for Work and Pensions, Britain's biggest department, spent £166.98 billion in 2011-12, not “more than £200 billion”, as Wilson states.

Wilson lies by saying that everything in the Philpott house was paid for by benefits. Both of the women who lived there had jobs. When he talks about people “being programmed into believing they were entitled to something for nothing”, I suggest that he starts with some of his friends in our government from hell.

Wilson asserts that blocks of flats and tenement buildings are filled with drug-taking benefit fraudsters, scroungers and people on the make; in other words, he’s stereotyping everyone who lives in those buildings. He even describes the riots of 2011 as “a perversion of our benefits system”. I’m sure the Tory trolls on this forum will welcome his lies, as they are bound to reinforce their own prejudices. Keep telling the lies, tell them often enough and the morons will believe them. If a wicked crime involving the death of six children can be milked for political advantage, it appears to be fine if you’re a sick Tory supporter.

Where ‘The Daily Mail’ leads, George Osborne follows: “It's right we ask questions as a government, a society and as taxpayers, why we are subsidising lifestyles like these. It does need to be handled.”

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/04/osbornes-intervention-over-philpott-case-new-low

Fortunately, not everyone is as vicious and twisted as that vile creep Osborne. These are two extracts from an article which Zoe Williams has written for ‘The Guardian’:-

It is vitriolic, illogical depersonalisation to ascribe the grotesqueness of one wild, unique crime to tens of thousands of people on benefits. It is a marked feature of the last three years that people claiming benefits have been represented in a particular way – as worthless, immoral, grasping and, fundamentally, different to the rest of us. While political rhetoric endlessly labours the difference between ‘skivers" and "strivers’, very little genuine attempt is made to distinguish between people who are on unemployment benefit and people who receive benefits because of low wages (which, incidentally, most of the Philpotts' benefit income came under – both women worked, and got tax credits).

The Baptists, Methodists, the United Reform Church and the Church of Scotland have come out against the six myths routinely spread, by politicians, about the poor: that they are lazy, addicted to drink or drugs, not really poor, cheat the system, have an easy life, and that they caused the deficit. Set down on paper, they are astonishing, laughable. And yet these ideas are pervasive, written across the landscape of this miserable Tory Narnia. The cost of welfare is called "unsustainable", borrowing a sense of fear and scarcity from an environmental debate with which it has precisely nothing in common to suggest breakneck spending of the nation's resources, on these welfare claimants, as far back as the country can remember. Nobody is unemployed any more, they're part of a "culture of worklessness".

For the full article:-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/03/dont-get-mad-about-use-of-philpotts-tarnish-poor

As you can imagine, Twitter has been very lively on this subject. Here are a few of the relevant tweets:-

"The idea Philpott is representative of people on benefits is as absurd as suggesting Harold Shipman is representative of GPs.” (Owen Jones)

“Using the shocking and vile crimes of Mick Philpott to advance a political argument is the cynical act of a desperate chancellor." (Ed Balls)

Osborne logic. Lord Lucan went to Eton. Lord Lucan murdered his child's nanny. Everyone who went to Eton is a nanny murderer.

Do tell us ‘Daily Mail’, was Peter Sutcliffe the vile product of long-distance lorry driving?

Osborne secretly included a field for a horse on taxpayer-funded expenses. Why should we fund his lifestyle?

Using the Philpott case to attack welfare is like calling for 100% inheritance tax to stop people like Stephen Seddon murdering their parents.

Osborne's economic "strategy" (for want of a better word) is based on the Philpott model - burn it down then try to pretend you saved it.

These vicious, distorted stories are surely a sign of the times - it was so predictable that this nasty fascist-like government was going to capitalise on this heartbreaking story to widen the already huge social fault line between the 'good' and the 'evil' members of our society.

I am so, so ashamed of living in this country at the present time.

I really struggle to understand how we got here.

Sorry, folks, nothing constructive there.

Can anybody think of anything constructive achieved by the Coalition?

Once again proving that when they're is a new low to sink to, they will find it. I can only wonder what their daily view is ~ perhaps that of a snake's belly. Sickening.

ow said: Can anybody think of anything constructive achieved by the Coalition?

Yes some didn't know what coalition meant till the two vile bastards Herr Cameron and Clegg got together.

It is hard to become indignant about the latest in a long, long line of Tory smears against any element of society of which it disapproves. Anyone with half a brain has always known just how horrible they are and that cruelty to the weak and disadvantaged is to them an enjoyment.

The Tory mind is a perverted and repulsive entity and one should be grateful that the disease is not contagious...

In World War 2, coalition was described as collaboration with the enemy.
Some things don't change.

Aren’t ‘Daily Mail’ readers supposed to believe in individual responsibility? In which case, shouldn’t they and their paper be blaming just Philpott for his actions, not the benefit system? Here are two extracts from an article by Dr William Oddie (not the birdwatcher!) which develop that point:-

Michael Philpott did evil things because of the benefits system, says A.N. Wilson. That’s surely a perfect example of the folly of moral relativism.

“What the Philpott trial showed”, Wilson says, “was the pervasiveness of evil caused by benefit dependency”. So, the deaths of these children weren’t really the fault of Philpott at all. He was a bad man, all right. But why was he a bad man? He was made bad by the benefits system: that’s what Wilson seems to say, in effect: “Philpott did not suddenly decide, after a blameless life, to set fire to his house, with six children inside it, and blame it on his ex-mistress. He did so after years of cynically exploiting the system; years of having children so as to claim yet more benefit; years of rampant dishonesty; years of treating the women in his life as objects of pleasure and the resulting children as a means to an end of more money for beer and cannabis.”

Philpott is an evil man, who has done many evil things in his life, the most horrific of which has been the latest. He chose to do them. He was not in any way forced by circumstances into them. If he had not perpetrated his latest vindictively motivated crime, six children who died horrific deaths would now be alive. Nothing else but his own malignancy can be blamed for what he has done.

For the rest of the article:-
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2013/04/04/an-wilson-is-wrong-the-benefits-system-is-not-the-cause-of-mick-philpotts-hideous-behaviour/

Source: https://twitter.com/xugla/status/320569798205526016/photo/1

But you have to admit they know how to put on a Wedding or a Funeral.

I'm confused by the vituperation emanating from Government Ministers criticising Mick Philpott.

The man is an archetypal TORY. Philpott capitalised on his main asset (reproductive ability) to maximise his income. At which he was phenomenally successful.

What do Tory entrepreneurs do every day if not precisely that? City Fund Managers would swoon at an opportunity to return £20,000+ for such a small investment.

'The Daily Mail' front page you will never see:-


Source: markreckons.blogspot.co.uk

Right-wing media and members of this government are taking a very simplistic approach by saying that benefits had any bearing in this case....

By trying to insinuate that if this mans plan had worked and that he had 'saved' his children from the fire that engulfed the house he would have been given a larger 'council' house is just not being totally honest...he would have been hailed a hero and would have had news papers waving cheque-books under his nose, viaing for the a scoop.

I believe that this is more likely the motive than just a bigger council house.........

But you have to admit they know how to put on a Wedding or a Funeral.

Throw enough money at weddings and funerals and they will look splendid - you could marry a pig to an ass and still make it look good

Rock. Philpott was arrested on suspicion of murder, but I presume that the police couldn't provide evidence to convince a jury that his 'intention' was to kill his children. So he was charged and convicted of manslaughter.

In my book, setting fire to a house in which you know six people are sleeping is murder, and the only decent journalist on 'The Daily Mail', Sonia Poulton, has been making that point on Twitter. I still hope, and expect, that Philpott will be considered too dangerous to ever be released from prison; that will a matter for the parole board in at least fifteen years from now.

I'm sure you know that I don't agree with your suggested punishment for Philpott, but we've had a discussion along those lines several times previously!

I have no doubt that Philpott will receive cruel and painful treatment every day from his fellow prisoners, to which no doubt the prison officers will by and large turn a blind eye. I imagine his life will be as miserable as fellow humans can make it, and I suspect if he ever leaves prison it will be as a very old man, and it will be to die.

I doubt whether any of this will result in him learning true remorse for what he has done, or will reduce the risk of him offending again in a similar way if the occasion arose; nor will it restore to life the children who died as a result of his monstrous selfishness, nor ease any of the emotional pain of those left behind.

Some of the prisoners putting the boot in will no doubt experience a debased 'frisson' of pleasure - after all, some people enjoy causing pain.

RockOnBrother wrote:
Open question to any person familiar with UK and/or English law: Why were this sorry piece of inhumanity and his coven of evil convicted only of manslaughter? In the jurisdictions with which I am familiar, common law presumes that, since the coven intentionally set fire to the council home within which they had intentionally secured the children, they knew or should have known that their actions created a high probability that the children would be burned to death, thus meeting the “aforethought” requirement. Additionally, these deaths by burning occurred during the commission of at least two felony crimes, (1) felony arson, and (2) intent to file a false felony crime police report, the second of which involved “malice aforethought.”

It seems to me that they should have been tried on first degree murder and criminal conspiracy charges. This is a case where I wish the UK and Texas had an… “arrangement”… whereby folks like this could have a last dance with “Ol’ Sparky.” For inhumans like this, I’d quickly volunteer to dust off and polish up the ol’ gal.

RockOnBrother I believe the main reason for charging him and his other 2 defendants was there was no intent to kill there , in that he was hoping to use the fire to his own ends in the custody battle over 5 of his children with his mistress, who had since moved out. Their deaths were at least from a legal stand point a horrible accident, although 1 caused by Philpott himself. Have to agree with your point on capital punishment, vermin like this don't deserve to draw breath and a death sentence would have been karmic to say the least.