Monday, December 18, 2006
Different viewpoints on what is happening in Ipswich
Eighteen months ago Ken's partner went to Spain, met a barman and left him, so he began visiting Ipswich's red light district again. Ken lives in Colchester, 17 miles down the A12, but his home town doesn't have an area where women work the streets. So for the past 15 years, on and off, he's always come to Ipswich.
But he doesn't like to think of himself as just another punter. "It was just one night after my relationship finished, I ended up in the red light district," he says.
I really have nothing to feel guilty about an article by Esther Addley of the Guardian newspaper.
This week has seen the conclusion of an inquiry into another tragic death of a young vulnerable women in which accusations, many of them absurd, have been made, not least by one of the newspapers listed above. Pointing fingers is a dangerous game. We can argue about what the best way is to deal with drugs and with prostitution, although both debates have been largely sterile recently, but assigning blame should be a complex procedure.
We do not know the man, or men, who is, or are, carrying out these murders in Suffolk. We do not know what motivates or drives them. We do not know if they are driven into a frenzy by reading regular outpourings of bile about permissiveness in some of our daily newspapers, or by constantly seeing pictures of famous drug-takers in those publications. And Moss and Doherty didn't ask their "friends" to rat on them to the press.
When the perpetrator is finally caught, we can hope to learn some lessons, but one lesson that need not wait for it is that, very sadly, there are murderous people at large now, as there were in the last century and the century before. And we do a disservice to the victims by trying to drag them from the murder scene to display them casually as exhibits for our personal moral prejudices.
These bilious outpourings an article by Duncan Campbell of the Guardian newspaper.
I am sure there is more to come.
But he doesn't like to think of himself as just another punter. "It was just one night after my relationship finished, I ended up in the red light district," he says.
I really have nothing to feel guilty about an article by Esther Addley of the Guardian newspaper.
This week has seen the conclusion of an inquiry into another tragic death of a young vulnerable women in which accusations, many of them absurd, have been made, not least by one of the newspapers listed above. Pointing fingers is a dangerous game. We can argue about what the best way is to deal with drugs and with prostitution, although both debates have been largely sterile recently, but assigning blame should be a complex procedure.
We do not know the man, or men, who is, or are, carrying out these murders in Suffolk. We do not know what motivates or drives them. We do not know if they are driven into a frenzy by reading regular outpourings of bile about permissiveness in some of our daily newspapers, or by constantly seeing pictures of famous drug-takers in those publications. And Moss and Doherty didn't ask their "friends" to rat on them to the press.
When the perpetrator is finally caught, we can hope to learn some lessons, but one lesson that need not wait for it is that, very sadly, there are murderous people at large now, as there were in the last century and the century before. And we do a disservice to the victims by trying to drag them from the murder scene to display them casually as exhibits for our personal moral prejudices.
These bilious outpourings an article by Duncan Campbell of the Guardian newspaper.
I am sure there is more to come.
Labels: guardian, Ipswich Murders, News, Streetworkers
