Its almost like the establishment are trying to distract from something elseâŚ
Private Eye report
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Youâre trying very hard here.
Poor old dear dies and thereâs barely a word about her, other than how long she was married to some uber loyal exeter fan. Then follows a lengthy and emotional tribute to the successful restructuring of said club.
If that what redeems the tans then so be itâŚ
Like I said
Youâve lost your way flatty, come home before you lose your soul
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I think it sounds like youâve lost yours glenshane.
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I have to admit that I was shocked to discover that the old man woke up from that as well 
I thought thatâs where the story was headingâŚmaybe if he woke up, said he dreamt harlequins won the league, and then the son told him he wasnât dreaming and then he died, with a smile on his face. That would have been a lovely tale?
Thereâs a touch of the In Cold Blood Truman Capote about the last two posts.
Hon Gary boy!
Lee Kern blocked me on Twitter in 2019 because I tweeted to him it was strange that he saw social justice as something to be ridiculed. This was my only ever tweet @ him.
He seems to be a terrible racist snowflake.
The policewoman here FFS
https://twitter.com/addicted2newz/status/1749099365442990226?t=YvAsX8ruTzepFL04zYlVHQ&s=19
That Chinese lad was a total wanker.
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It was the saddest of Christmas stories: a child of two starving alone by his dead fatherâs body. Bronson Battersby and his father, Kenneth, were found on January 9, with a pet dog emaciated but alive. Before Christmas the tenant overhead had been disturbed enough by sounds from this lonely fragment of a family to ring the NSPCC. On Boxing Day they were seen and messages exchanged. The next day social services arranged a monthly visit and a neighbour texted.
On New Yearâs Day the child was heard repeatedly calling âDaddyâ, but it seems likely that Battersby was dead: he had a heart condition. On the 2nd and again on the 4th a social worker knocked. No answer. Police were contacted. But it was five days later that, with the landladyâs key, the bodies were found.
Grieve for the child, the mother, for the young siblings she kept with her and the adult ones who loved the baby of the blended family. Grieve too for the father, who may have known he was dying and realised the risk that no neighbour or official would presume to invade his âfamily privacyâ by crashing in uninvited soon enough to save his little son.
Weeping is appropriate, and so is the fact that social services and police are examining their response. The local MP Matt Warman immediately announced âa genuine failure by the authoritiesâ, and the mother says âthey didnât do anythingâ, but Bronsonâs adult sister Melanie bravely refuses to cry easy blame. She says that the authorities âdid what they could, within the powers that they had and the information that they were givenâ.
Beyond sheer pity and kneejerk blame, these deaths should prompt reflection on how our society works. This is not about deliberate cruelty. Nobody was malevolent, drugged or sadistic; the father had a history with alcohol but there is no suggestion of that. He was on speaking terms with the estranged wife who kept their seven and three-year-olds while handing him Bronson. An adult son had invited father and child for Christmas.
Skegness scores far too high in poverty, crime, âeconomic inactivityâ and prescribed antidepressants but it is not âbrokenâ, and Lincolnshire social services generally score well. Bronson Battersby was by all accounts healthy, active, well nourished, learning to talk and bonded to his father.
Yet this, our fellow citizen, died slowly, alone in the dark beside a corpse as the year turned. A thing so terrible should alert us because it is a particularly 21st-century death. It does not belong at a former time, when tight working-class communities were crammed close together and the local grandmothers had no fear of interfering and judging. It belongs in a regulated country, where report forms are logged and legal protections pronounced for childrenâs wishes and welfare; but on the other hand where the culture demands an unprecedentedly liberal respect for a familyâs right to design its own behaviour and liaisons.
In a backlash from hard old bigotries we eschew moral judgment. The me-first glorification of adult demands for self-fulfilment cascades down from applauded celebrities and affluent liberal middle-classes to make life dangerous for those with fewer resources.
Thus a woman can have seven children by various fathers, commit two to care then marry and have three more, entrusting the most vulnerable to her husband after a falling-out (and, it is said, a new partner). Thus father and son inhabit alone a rented flat, with a heart weakness and injured foot keeping the adult âlargely confined to the couchâ watching football, the family not even reunited for Christmas.
But fashion forbids âjudgmentalismâ about private family arrangements. Nobody must point out that even without actual abuse there are, for Godâs sake, situations and carers simply too risky for a toddler who canât call for help or reach food and drink. Nobody must pry or check up: another sensible remark by Bronsonâs adult sister was that in the long days of silence the mother â who hadnât seen the child since November â should have just âknocked down the door, or asked one of us toâ.
I am haunted also by the sad, regretful words of a neighbour who did ring the NSPCC: âI never felt I was in a position to confront him. I have no kids myself so cannot tell someone else how to parent a child.â Bitter irony there: our age has prissily turned the word âparentâ into a verb, and prates about it as a sort of upmarket skill, rather than a hard basic duty. Equally ironic to note that every day someone gets reported for neglecting a dog.
Freedom and an Englishmanâs castle make a fine ideal, and all might have gone well in the Battersbysâ arrangement. But it was precarious.
Maybe such households are simply too common for the authorities to take danger seriously unless there is violent or sexual abuse. It is hard to accept that a well-nourished child, last seen cheerfully waving a pink wafer biscuit at a neighbour, might easily meet a terrible end within a fortnight because of that fragility.
But he did. If state and community wonât condemn, we need to increase watchfulness. Reinforce frontline social work and its ability to lean hard on the police, and probably its permission to hold more keys to front doors. Especially if behind them a two-year-oldâs lifeline is a lone weakened man in his sixties, already once reported to the NSPCC after verbally âhaving a go at the poor ladâ for crying.
Bronson had more rights than any of us, because he was small. We failed him.
That is one of the most harrowing things Iâve read in many years. That poor little fella. Multiple societal failures killed that child.
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Read about it a while back and didnât want to post it. It was too awful.
Thatâs a good article.
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Well written piece there about a heartbreaking situation