This year has seen a gruesome series of stories bearing out the Broken Society narrative, starting with teenagers shooting each other and ending with Karen Matthews abducting her own daughter in search of a McCann-style reward. Look at most of these stories, including Baby P, and there is a common theme: they take place in welfare ghettoes, those oases of deprivation in every British city. While we should condemn the evil, we should also condemn something the system that incubates the evil. There was a reason that Beveridge called idleness a “giant evil”. As I say in my News of the World column today when you pay people to do nothing you mess with human nature.
This point was put very well by Sir Norman Bettison, chief constable of West Yorkshire Police, which investigated Shannon Matthews’ abduction.
“Here are almost hidden, secret parts of our community.
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