Monday 19 September 2011

J'accuse Peter

In his Sunday Mail column this week 50's Teddy-boy fan Peter Hitchens dares people to accuse him of 'moral panic'. Why - in this specific case - would you want to accuse the perennially grumpy old sod of moral panic you may ask? Well Peter does his best to regale us of a horrible case of persecution, bullying and intimidation that were heaped upon the undeserving Fiona Pilkington and her daughter.

These horrendous events are a clear demonstration that the world has slid into a mire of lefty lawlessness with benefit baddies running amok. His main stab at a point revolves around the fact that these heinous type of events did not occur when there was fear of the law. He seems to think that the past was a country bereft of evil, although if you do a quick search you'll find plenty of cases of people coming forward with their horror stories of abuse and harm inflicted on the vulnerable by people in positions of power; nuns & priests for instance.

Perhaps Peter pines for an age where there seems to be much less vicious crime purely because it's reported less. Hear no evil, speak no evil so there can't be any evil?


That's not Peter's view of course he believes that it's a fear or reluctance of intervention by authorities that allows offenders to get away with their actions. As he paraphrases them "We can do anything we want..." Why can they do anything they want? Surely because no one is stopping them.

A little further down his rant - past a piece whimsically praising stay at home mothers and pinafores - he tells a tale of a stroll through modern Britain, presumably taken by himself. In this stroll he comes across a "Menacing young man" who looks like he's going to attack a group of young women with pushchairs. Does Peter - a man in a position of authority, a respectable pillar of the community, a guiding light and example to millions of readers - intervene and try to protect these young women vulnerable to attack. Well you'd imagine he would, he spent a few hundred words not far up the page criticising a lack of intervention, but of course he doesn't. Apparently there's no sign of authority and he's not interested in helping. He's not interested in making the country better, he's not interested in looking out for the weak, he's not interested in challenging offenders.

He is interested in spying on a scene of potential violent crime, writing about this as an increasing amount of evidence of 'moral panic' in modern Britain and pocketing a big fat cheque for the privilege though.






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