Doherty and Moss to blame for Suffolk murders

[Sima 0]

Why Pete and Kate should hang their heads in shame over the Suffolk murders

By A.N WILSON Last updated at 00:33am on 14th December 2006

 

Kate Moss and Pete Doherty: They make drugs seem 'cool'

Headlines

 

Who killed the young women whose bodies have been discovered in rural Suffolk in the past horrifying few days?

 

The answer is, of course, a maniac who might or might not be working alone.

 

But in a broader sense, the guilt for these deaths rests with those who have allowed the women to become dependent upon hard drugs.

 

For that is why they were hanging around the red light district of Ipswich looking for what they pathetically called 'business'.

 

It is unbearable to imagine the emotions of the parents, families and friends of these poor women when, in every single news broadcast about the murders, they are described as 'prostitutes'.

 

There's no denying, that is why they were on the streets. But to define these very young people in this way, in the hour of their death, is so demeaning and so unfair.

 

They were not out on the streets because they were attracted to their clients. They were there, on the cold, seedy pavements of downtown Ipswich, because they were desperate, not for sex, but for drugs.

 

Like countless other young people in this country, and indeed in the Western world, they had been trapped by the drug culture. Peer group pressure probably lured them into it.

 

Some of the young girls who walk the streets are of an addictive personality who would have destroyed themselves with alcohol or some other substance had crack cocaine or heroin not been available.

 

But the great majority of these young women, and of so many of their contemporaries in trouble with the law, have become addicted to the sort of drugs which have been glamorised by sections of the media, and by the stars of rock music, television and the fashion industry.

 

What kind of message does the shallow and irresponsible fashion industry give out when, a year after those grainy pictures appeared of Kate Moss snorting cocaine, she is earning more than ever and was named Model of the Year at the British Fashion Awards?

 

Pete Doherty, her rock star boyfriend, is another case in point. Only this month, he was had up (yet again) for possession and abuse of Class A drugs.

 

Rather than being given an exemplary prison sentence, which would have hit the headhavelines in the newspapers and sent a clear message to any of his potential admirers and imitators among our young people, he was given a paltry £770 fine.

 

Such a small sum of money means nothing to someone in Kate Moss's position or that of her boyfriend.

 

Of course, these celebrities sometimes wreck their own lives by drugs. But one problem they do not ever really worry about is the expense of their self-destructive habits.

 

It is a very different story for the young people of Britain who see figures like Kate Moss snorting cocaine and then being given huge contracts to work again in the fashion industry; or her partner taking hard drugs and being given a derisory fine; or many other examples we could all name from the world of TV and the media.

 

Such celebrities make it seem as if taking hard drugs is cool, is fun. The worst risk, they seem to imply, is getting caught by the stuffy old police and being given a fine.

 

If you are an unemployed young woman with a drug problem living in the poorer part of one of Britain's towns, crack cocaine and heroin are still extremely expensive.

 

The swiftest and most obvious way to pay for the habit is prostitution, but theft, burglary and other street crimes, all of which spiralled in line with the increase in drug abuse, are other consequences of the disaster.

 

We live in a country which, by the standards of any other era, is unimaginably prosperous. No one needs to go hungry, as they did until World War II.

 

Nearly everyone who chooses to can be adequately housed. Medicine and education (admittedly of variable quality) are available to all.

 

And yet, quite palpably and observably, our society is in a state of dissolution, misery and moral chaos around us.

 

Why? In very large measure, it is because of the drug crisis which we have not yet solved. Crime, violence, absenteeism from school, mental health problems among the young - they all go back to drugs.

 

Nor should one simply think that it is only the so-called hard drugs which wreck human lives. Only this month a young friend of mine has been sectioned under the Mental Health Act because of smoking what he took to be harmless cannabis.

 

The truth is that the man who has set out to strangle young women in Ipswich is not their only murderer.

 

Up in the dock beside him, when he is caught and stands trial, should be not only the dealers and pushers who helped these unfortunate young women to develop their drug dependency - it would also be good to see every celebrity who has sought to glamorise drug-taking by blatant and exhibitionistic use of illegal substances.

 

For they, too, have the blood of these young women on their hands.

 

The Government has not done nearly enough to control and combat the abuse of drugs. For example, the poppy fields of Afghanistan and the cocaine producers of Colombia could be fought with cash.

 

The British Government could buy out their supplies and insist that those who had been unfortunate enough to become addicts were helped back to freedom only on condition they accepted treatment or underwent severe punishment.

 

Obviously, merely locking up drug addicts in our regular prisons, where the drug culture is rife and where there is not much else to do except take illegal substances, is not the answer.

 

There has simply not been enough imaginative thinking by the Government on this issue.

 

But any suggestion that we should go easy on drugs or imply that they are really quite harmless should be very firmly resisted.

 

The young women of Suffolk are hitting the headlines at the moment for the horrible way in which they die.

 

But for every one of them, there are hundreds of young people in Britain whose lives have been reduced to sordid, abject degradation by the habit of taking drugs.

 

The Government has concentrated enormous resources, with the help of the medical profession, on eliminating cigarette smoking from public places, and reducing the numbers of smokers among the population.

 

Yet the drugs which truly destroy the lives of those who take them, and of all those around them, continue to be taken in yet more terrifying doses.

 

And don't make the mistake of supposing that those girls in Ipswich died merely because they were working-class.

 

I have known young boys and girls of all classes and walks of life destroyed by drugs. When you need your fix and you are in the gutter, you are at rock bottom and will do anything.

 

So thank you, Mick Jagger, Angus Deayton, Pete Doherty, Kate Moss and all those who, with vast sums of money at their disposal, have chosen in the past to break the law and take drugs.

 

By doing so, they have set an example which may have left the celebrities unhurt, while their pathetic young admirers face frightening, lonely and sordid deaths.

 

Amazing, never cease to surprise.

[Gemmill 34608]

Even by the Mail's standards, that's a bit special.

[Guest alex]

God, stopped reading that about half-way through. My mate reckons Babyshambles were class the other week though.

[ewerk 26441]

[luckyluke 1]

oh. My. God.

[sweetleftpeg 0]

I'm not a fan of the Smack Rat like, but the Daily Mail really has reached a new low with that like.

 

On a related note, anyone got this month's Viz? On the Gilbert Ratchet strip they cancel Christmas because there's a headline on the front of the Daily Mail that reads 'Christmas gives you Cancer'.

[Tom_NUFC 0]

Dear me. Doherty is a prick, but its disgraceful of the Daily Mail to do that.

[Guest alex]

Of course the Daily Mail and others are in no way responsible for continually following Doherty and Moss and trying to find them up to no good and then splashing it all over the front pages.

[nufc4ever 0]

Doherty's a prick, but that piece is laughable.

[BlueStar 0]

Brilliant

 

You sure that wasn't made up with that headline generator?

 

Edit: Even outdid The Telegraph's take on it

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jh...2/13/do1301.xml

Amid the welter of probation officers, right-on policemen, social workers, outreach workers, penologists, psychologists, do-gooders and bleeding hearts I soon realised I had only one ally in the cause of understanding less and condemning more.

Edited December 18, 2006 by BlueStar

[Papa Lazaru 0]

God, stopped reading that about half-way through. My mate reckons Babyshambles were class the other week though.

 

Finally, we've found somebody who take more drugs than Doherty by the sounds of that statement

 

I always love the media blaming people when its them who print these stories day in, day out glamorising it all. Though to be fair if they want to arrest Doherty for accesory to any of these murders, then feel free!

[Happy Face 29]

Aye, the papers are a disgrace, and if Coronation Street didn't glamourise sweets and Andrex little puppies then kids wouldn't be in danger of perverts using their weakness to entice them.

 

Ban it all, it's a fucking disgrace.

[Renton 17825]

I would have thought Doherty was a good advert to avoid drugs!

 

Hilarious article, the Mail has plumbed new depths in utter crass stupidity, I think I'll go out and score some hard drugs now, cos that Kate Moss wants a good shagging, or something.

[BlueStar 0]

Just in case you're wondering where the speculation that it was an immigrant is:

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/arti...in_page_id=1770

A migrant worker from Eastern Europe is being sought by police investigating the Suffolk strangler murders.

[Ted Maul 0]

A few weeks ago they published a story about how MySpace was to blame for some daft student drinking himself to death. It would've been funny if it wasn't so un-fucking-believable.

[The Fish 9010]

... that's genius... comedy fucking Gold

 

if I didn't know better I would have expected it to be in the Private Eye, or on the Daily show...

[Bombadil 0]

[DanTheMan 0]

Look at the timewhich the article was created at! He'd obviously been drinking!

[luckyluke 1]

Just in case you're wondering where the speculation that it was an immigrant is:

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/arti...in_page_id=1770

A migrant worker from Eastern Europe is being sought by police investigating the Suffolk strangler murders.

 

That link didn't work, but whilst looking for that story I glanced at their report on the bloke who has been arrested. There's a lot of personal information on there, if this guy is innocent he's going to get fucking lynched anyway now.

[Tom 13881]

It reads like it was written by a 15 year old for a gcse project

[Walliver 0]

...

It is unbearable to imagine the emotions of the parents, families and friends of these poor women when, in every single news broadcast about the murders, they are described as 'prostitutes'.

 

There's no denying, that is why they were on the streets. But to define these very young people in this way, in the hour of their death, is so demeaning and so unfair.

...

 

From the Daily Mail:

"The forklift truck driver was arrested yesterday at his bedsit in Ipswich on suspicion of murdering five prostitutes whose bodies were found earlier this month."

 

"THE number of detectives investigating the prostitute murders has doubled to 200 as Tony Blair promised full support to the 'unprecedented' inquiry by Suffolk Police."

 

"Yesterday, he arrived in Suffolk to examine the bodies of the five prostitutes whose bodies have been found in rural areas around Ipswich."

 

" A serial killer is being hunted after the bodies of five prostitutes were found in Suffolk."

 

"Police investigating the murder of five Ipswich prostitutes have been granted more time to quiz a second man."

 

That's from the top five stories on their website when you search for the word Suffolk. I'm sure it carries on in this fashion.