What is really sad about all this is the necessity for such an apparatus in any local authority. Has our society really become so fragmented that people can get away with such crimes for so long?

Of course it has. We are so alienated, so disenfranchised, so isolated by what is perceived as a remote and arrogant political class – aided of course by the public sector as a whole – that we prefer to shut our front doors and mind our own business. It was not always thus: no such case would have been possible in the working class street in which my mother was born, simply because people took an interest in their neighbours. They did this because they had to. There was no welfare state.

Like all socialist constructs, the welfare state reads like a great idea on paper. In practice, it leads inevitably to lack of self esteem, then moral corrosion and ultimate breakdown.

It is too late to go back and undo the damage done by Atlee’s government; but thought should be given to the way welfare is administered, for I believe it too is one of the culprits in this sorry affair.