PURE EVIL. That’s how one senior police officer branded Karen Matthews, the woman who rigged the kidnap of her nine year old daughter Shannon in the hope of pocketing around £50,000 in reward money.
Without exception this morning’s newspapers lay into her in the crudest possible class-ridden terms, revelling in the multiple stereotypes provided by some council estate chav slapper from Dewsbury who spent most of her benefits on fags. With seven kids by six dads, she clearly shows up Ulrika Jonsson for the lightweight she is in the multiple-father fecundity stakes. But no one's lashing out at the posh birds this time round.
It’s as easy for the tabloids to attack her as it apparently was to get her into the sack. ‘Lazy, sex-mad’ Ms Matthews – the Daily Mail headline writers tell us – represents ‘a pathetic symbol of broken Britain’. Much more of this sort of stuff, and before long they’ll be forced to start asking who broke it.
The coverage of the case was slanted from the start, with even the initial reports of Shannon’s disappearance injected with a certain element of doubt. The contrast with the treatment of those nice Middle England McCanns could not have been more complete. They were too tight to hire babysitters, perhaps, but otherwise completely morally exonerated.
Together with accomplice Michael Donovan, Karen Matthews has been found guilty of kidnap, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice, and can justifiably expect a substantial custodial sentence.
No-one can for one moment possibly excuse what she did. But it’s worth noting that her whole amateurish and half-baked project – transparently ripped off from the plot line of a widely-watched TV sitcom – was hardly the work of a sophisticated criminal mastermind.
To bandy a term like ‘pure evil’ about for the doings of an intellectually-challenged small-town scamster lacks any sense of proportion. If we are to deploy it, what words can we then use to describe some of the grimmer pages of modern history? ‘Desperately social inadequate’ sounds somewhat closer to the mark.
Posted at 14:19, 5 December 2008
Comments (10)
Actually I'd hold judgement. Whilst I think it likely she did what she was convicted for, it's hard to tell with the very selective media reporting of such cases - all prosecution and little defence.
And what a prosecution. There was fair bit of coverage of the fact that she supposedly paid more attention to the ringtone on a cop's phone than being told something about her daughter - and this was emphasised in the post conviction interview with the cop as an example of what a unfit mother she was.
A minor quirk of behaviour, irrelevant to the case, but played for all its small minded Daily Mail toxic outraged citizen what sort of animal is this witch listening to ringtones worth.
A strategy I also saw on a jury when the CPS went out of its way to point out that this bloke may have not reported his neighbour's dog as being abandoned in a case where he was charged with hitting his wife - as in what do you expect from a fiend who doesn't love animals?
So as such whether she knew about where her daughter was or not, I don't know. But from her accent, the media coverage at the time of the kidnap, her background and most probably the facts, she was never going to be found not guilty.
Has Southpawpunch ever LIVED on a council estate, especially one like the one the Matthews lived on? Thought not. Has Southpawpunch ever been friendly with members of the lumpen proletariat, as opposed to members of the organised Labour movement? The judges comments were rather hyperbolic, I mean if Shannon Matthews and her ridiculous scheme to make money is pure evil, what term do you use to describe Hitler or Stalin?, however, having said that, some members of the non-property owning class are not very nice. My younger sister was made to drink bleach when she was at school by a girl who was jealous of the fact that she was prettier and more popular than she was. But then, they're like that in Barnet. who does he thinks sells drugs, who does he thinks robs old aged pensioners, who does he thinks throws cats and dogs into canels etc etc. Of-course this is a minority of people, but it does happen. Far more uplifting is the response of the other people on the estate. By all accounts the Matthews didn't involved themselves in any sort of community life, but the neighbours still rallied round and hunted for this girl. That's the spirit that built the British Labour Movement. If Karen Matthews owes anyone an apology, it's to a)her daughter and b)those good people she lived among.
And all the rich do is steal billions like the Enron three, simply put if your rich and steal or if your poor and steal I know which one will be slagged off the worse.
Dave: "The contrast with the treatment of those nice Middle England McCanns could not have been more complete. They were too tight to hire babysitters, perhaps, but otherwise completely morally exonerated."
Are you sure? My recollection is that the press - esp the Express- ran a lurid campaign suggesting that the Mccann's had a hand in their daughter's disappearance
Meanwhile, in "another court"...
Peter Hain (our aspirational middle-class Guardian hero) is DECLARED...INNOCENT!
"ORANGE SKY AT NIGHT,
HAIN'S EGO IS BACK ALIGHT"
(Old Neath Folk Proverb)
REJOICE...the Forward march of Orange Labour can now continue to PROGRESSIVELY shape shift. "Cheers for Pete!" ~ Lord Mandelson.
Note: A "Peter Hain" glow in the dark DWP mug now will be given to all those "estate dwellers" convicted of claiming benfits whilst recieving c. £103K in undeclared income ( aka donations). Cos he understands this stuff and says sorry. Sob.
I take your point about the silliness of calling this retarded idiot "pure evil". But on the McCanns, much of the press suggested they had something to do with the disappearence (in effect had killed their daughter). They were ultimatly "morally exonerated" because they were innocent. Karen Matthews is guilty.
It is entirely inappropriate for the police to be going around making moral judgements, and describing people as "pure evil".
The definition of "evil" is in any case something we don't understand and/or have no empathy for.
The police are there to enforce the law and catch criminals. Fullstop.
One thing I am certain of, is that the notion of the 'underclass' 'welfare mums'(again a very American term, the UK has benefits not welfare) 'the feckless' etc, will be used over the next couple of years to deflect from the biggest economic crisis since perhaps WW2 or even the 30's.
Like that period, there will be an attempt to redirect anger about people's own dire circumstances to people who are even worse off. The other problem is that unlike the 1930's and Wal Hannington and the National Unemployed Workers Movement(NUWM) the Left and civil society(with some exceptions, see below) is not upto the job or prepared to defend these people,
http://www.compassonline.org.uk/camp...=3451#comments
Oh Look, right on que
Tories to probe long-term jobless
Out-of-work families face close scrutiny of their children and home life under new opposition proposals
* Gaby Hinsliff, political editor
* The Observer, Sunday December 7 2008
* Article history
Parents who are out of work will have their home lives and their children's prospects investigated under controversial Tory plans to tackle underclass Britain.
Households where no one has held down a regular job for generations should be viewed as a whole, the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Chris Grayling, argues today. A new breed of welfare-to-work advisers would be expected not only to find the parents jobs, but to ensure their children's life chances are not being damaged by the low aspirations of adults in the home.
They could examine children's school performance or problem behaviour, check whether the parents encouraged homework and school attendance, and intervene if necessary to stop children risking future unemployment.
Critics will argue the plans mark an unprecedented level of intrusion and risk stigmatising jobless families. But Grayling said they could prevent the 'fragmented approach' of many agencies all working with one family but none getting to the heart of complex problems.
'When you sit down with an 11-year-old and show that a young child can be encouraged to do better, that can be used as a lever for the parents,' said Grayling.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...als-employment
'Ms Matthews was not a member of the working class. It's arguable whether she was even a member of the human race. But it's deeply damaging to the cause of social justice to regard her as typical of the deserving poor. I'll make no apology for the use of the term "deserving poor", just as Marx made no apology for distinguishing between the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat.'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...annon-matthews
Oh, and this from a 'leftie' on the Guardian Cif,
Sadly this it the way many 'Marxists still see it, by their words you shall judge them'
Here's an interesting thing. Nobody to whom I spoke about the Shannon Matthews case had any inkling that Karen Matthews had done anything untoward, let alone suspected that she had put her kiddie in a box as part of a financial fiddle.
On the other hand, only one of the many people to whom I spoke about the Madeleine McCann case thought that the McCanns were playing with a straight bat, eveyone else to whom I spoke felt that there was something very odd about it all, that the family and their friends were not being exactly honest.