Details of the case were troubling.  Not only was there evidence that the child had been drugged during her 'kidnap', there was also analysis of  a section of her hair that she had been drugged when she had been living in her chaotic and workless home. The hair showed that she had been given the drug Temazepam (a common antidepressant drug on Britain's bleak housing estates) in August and in December, the clear implication being that the child was given a chemical cosh during the summer and winter holidays - a   novel spin on 'mother's little helper'.

It was related through Matthews' friends and relatives that she had children in order to be able to get increased welfare payments.

Even moderate voices are beginning to question a system which encourages people at the bottom of our society to have children they can never afford to support unaided.

Another story outlined just how easy it is Britain to become disclocated from day to day reality with a (by no means unique) tale of a woman who had never had a job in her 43 years:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7746174.stm

One might be moved to compassion as she relates what it is like to realise that her life has been frittered away on handouts and that it is probably too late for her to do anything with her life now.  Except that it is compassion that got her into this.

It was compassion that thought in the 1950s that people needed a safety net, and put in place a system of rights and entitlements which have no requirements or responsibilities attached.  Now, in the 21st century we are looking at a third generation of people who have grown up workless and useless - to both themselves and anyone else. Let me be explicit. There is an increasing underclass, where households have young adults with no jobs and no intention of getting one, their parents have never had jobs and their grandparents have never had jobs.  These mean, pale faces, with dark-circled eyes and the poor hair and skin that comes with a diet of fast food, are the real face of compassion. Those and the faces of abused children such a Shannon Matthews and Baby P.

Compassion is the triumph of emotion over reason, and the sleep of reason brings forth monsters such as these.