I could not resist making a few observations about the Southport murders not least because they brought the severest grief to quite a few innocent nobodies and sparked off a huge wave of civil disturbances which cost the nation a great deal in various ways. Some of the victims themselves said he looked possessed, and among the logical questions is by whom and/or what. How does a reasonably happy looking individual of about ten years of age on the left become this all too arguably demented looking character on the right.

Many may not have noticed or appreciated the significance of the remarks about his personal background at a time when various sorts of immigration and asylum seeking have become such a political hot potato that both major parties appear to be running scared of Reform which actually seems to want to do something about it as its principal policy. His parents were I believe both connected to the Tutsi upper/ruling class in Rwanda which was plunged into one of the worst genocidal civil wars in the mid nineties, had acquired asylum in the UK, and are therefore probably rather more culturally sophisticated than the relatively illiterate Jamaicans who make up the vast majority of English speaking ethnic Africans that middle aged Britons have typically encountered.

What is of the remark that his appalling rampage may have been occasioned by his family not quite comprehending the norms and values of British society, in that eg his forebears are perhaps more likely to have spoken German and/or French. The later image of him and the film of him in the taxi prior to this murderous spree arguably look like someone who has sucked up a lot of racist poison somehow, perhaps as the result of misunderstanding domestic social and political rhetoric and finding himself a loner: the nature of his target tends to suggest a racial motive if any can be reasonably discerned. It does seem reasonable to note that the fact of his parents having fled Rwanda in the nineties does mean that an unusual consideration of the fact of cynical murder is something he has unfortunately been confronted with as the principal social issue deterministically dominating the fact of his existence which I think shows in the prior image where he seems almost afraid to smile: it is very clear that domestic authorities failed to appraise the extent of his propensity for violence.

It seems worth adding, for those who may have only heard in passing of the events in Rwanda over the summer of 94, a few qualifying observations: Rwanda is a country about 20% larger than Wales with a population about five times its size of approaching four million, so the simple fact of population pressure obviously played some sort of a role to a significant extent. The two major ethnic groups have a significant history of mutual hostility in that it seems the Tutsi who apparently come from from the north east of the continent had been patronised as a ruling class by colonial interests. The particular outburst of homicidal violence that summer left something in the order of between a half and one million dead people in the streets which is perhaps as much as one in every couple of dozen people in the country. Since it does not take much time for bodies to decompose in the central African climate, within months the nation was treated to the unusually ghoulish experience of the sight of hundreds of thousands of skeletons littered all over the streets of any settlement of any size.

Many will no doubt have noted that the case bears similarities to the Nottingham murders perpetrated by Mr Valdo Calocane whose diagnosis of paranoid delusions have kept him out of jail to the immense disapprobation of the families of those he murdered. Many like myself must be having some trouble figuring out what the difference is between these cases and find themselves questioning the arbitrary random sort of decision making on the part of Doctors and Social Services. It is a supremely interesting question as to what lies behind the huge numbers of persons variously reporting mental health issues in that most over fifties are on the long term sick list and most university students are reporting mental health issues. The question seems to be as to whether or not there is something more interesting by way of an explanation for this than mere laziness in that for instance the world was not full of weapons of mass destruction when the present NHS GP system was introduced after WW2. It seems not entirely unreasonable to add that middle class GPs are arguably a soft touch when it comes to handing out sick notes in that they do tend to have a more middle class word view than is often appropriate. What is arguably of the remark that the judicial system arguably has the same sort of problem in that whatever qualities they may or may not have, magistrates are bourgeois amateurs with limitations like everyone else. No legal system will of course ever be perfect but what is of the observation that in the UK a rather dated looking legal system is having to rely on the personal views of magistrates and judges who also tend to reinforce bourgeois values rather than legal principle: I generally tend to support the assertion that mental health services are failed and failing.