What is the difference between Karen Matthews having a Million kids by trillion fathers and Ken Livingston fathering all his kids by different mothers?

Dave, Westbury, UK

The multi-faceted dysfunctionality of this group of people in this country has come as surprise to many. The most tragic aspect is that the group will perpetuate itself through its offspring, breeding prolifically and irresponsibly to producing ever more children who will not be taught any of the rudiments of self-respect, dignity, morality and social responsibility that are among the significant characteristics that help distinguish our species from others. These children will in turn start breeding at an early age and bring their own offspring up in the same vacuum, and so on ad infinitum.

Jacques Francis, Westcott,

Are we ever going to grow up? There are so many macro issues in the society surrounding us. We need to be putting our efforts into debating and solving them! Sadly, we (including me as I type this) have made celebrities out of Karen and Shannon. They will be remembered as long as the internet and information lives. For good or bad doesn't matter as long as someone can go into the books of history. This is what we all do as a society.

Kathirvel, Edinburgh, UK

Hume writes of "excitedly appalled"people. Not so,I am simply appalled.

D. Grant, Burbage, ENGLAND

So Raj Patel of Knightsbridge has received 'an eye opener' into the way that 'inferior social classes' live their lives. Is he suggesting that tenants of social housing are inferior to the rest of society? I would like to remind him that people on lower and middle incomes pay a higher percentage of their incomes to the treasury in the form of taxation than do many of their 'social superiors'. He would also do well to remember the appalling suffering directly resulting from attitudes of social superiority in Nazi Germany.

Council Tenant Gloucestershire.

Vera Ward, Dursley, England

A bleak existence, and an uncertain future for the children raised in this dysfunctional environment. They are members of a new underlass, the result of a broken society , not easily fixed. It is wrong the rest of society has the angry mob mentality, so easily influenced by the media. They complain but offer no solutions.

Joan, Edinburgh, UK

Hmmm, this article sounds familiar. As usual the media shove a story in our faces on a daily basis then accuse the rest of us of being obsessed with it. Then they wheel in the same old stereotypes – in this case, class; in other cases, race or geographical origin. Then without any proof, they decide that we get a perverse pleasure out of it. In the McCann case, the long-term interest was largely generated and entirely sustained by the media, for who knows what reason – I don’t buy the middle class sympathy rubbish. At least this one is more newsworthy, albeit in a tragic way: a poor little girl who looks to have been used as a pawn by her vindictive family to gain money and media attention, a family who have also needlessly exploited a huge amount of police resources. It’s disgusting. This article is just a pathetic attempt to try and make us all feel a bit guilty for something the media were made to look stupid for, while upholding those old class stereotypes. Class is irrelevant here

Matt F, London, England

Prole Porn is all very entertaining as long as you don't have to live with and in it. Sadly the proles do not differentiate for themselves and so we have TV output devoted to the abuse of them and they only too willing to take part. We have sordid, but actually sad, lives used as daytime entertainment.
The most successful porn of all must be the Simpsons which celebrates the dysfunctional family and makes everyone laugh with its very realistic portrayal of life in classless America.

Charles, Doncaster,

A lot of people here jumping to the conclusion that this family is a product of the benefits system. I seem to remember that the apparently odious Mr Meehan has been in full time employment for most of his 5 years cohabitation with Ms Matthews. Is this indicative of a presumption that everyone who lives in a council house must be a benefits scrounger?
By the way I was brought up in the area and in many ways it is pretty much like many others in the UK - a mixture of prosperous middle classes and ambitious working classes living close to, but quite apart from, an underclass who are corralled into dreadful sink estates!

stevo, London, England

Does Channel 4 have any "civilised" viewers ?

Richard Blackurn, Newcastle,

The Matthews family also cost us taxpayers a small fortune - the cost of policing, social care for Shannon, and no doubt a massive range of benefits. If the only - and scant - reward for our generosity is an insight into this dysfunctional family, who no doubt will soon be picking up huge sums from newspapers for their "stories", and losing their benfit entitlements at the same time, so be it.
However, on one level I admire this family. Despite 11 years of hectoring by New Labour about how we should become more worthy people this lot have not taken a blind bit of notice.

Dave, Slough,

Perhaps a reason for this (assumed) interest is that it is the "respectable folk" that is financing the lifestyle of a substantial part of that family. Maybe we just want to know what they are doing with our support?

Don Basilio, Cambridge, UK

I would say that our attitude is more one of anger at a group of people who live a life seemingly devoid of standards, self-restraint or wisdom and expect the rest of us to pick up the tab through their benefit payments.

John Tomlinson, Brentwood, UK

The mother was "allegedly" about to move in with another man after having 7 kids with 5 fathers. Possibly we could soon have seen child #8 by father #6? Surely a bit OTT.
I am one of the under 65 year old widowed pensioners clobbered by Brown dropping the 10% Tax Band. No doubt the swingeing 100% increase in my Income Tax was to help pay for people like this, as apparently neither she nor her
"partner- of -the -time" worked?
I'm not a blue-blood looking down my nose at the inmates of Bedlam, just ordinary working class on a low income and fed up with scroungers like this. The "lady" whose beautiful daughter was murdered in Goa was apparently another "free spirit" with several children and multiple fathers. If her daughter had been here, in the UK, studying for her exams like most 15 year olds, she would in all probability be alive today. Curiosity makes me wonder how that mother could afford to take her brood off to Goa for 6 months? I can't afford a week at Weymouth.

Beryl, Windsor, England

Fantastic article Mick. The whole case has been an unbelievable eye-opener into how inferior social classes in this country live their life. I was shocked that anyone could look so utterly despicable. A 32 year old woman with 7 children from 5 fathers, sleeping with a 22 year old paedo? Is this a reflection of people in northern England? Dewsbury seems an entirely different planet to the Square Mile. Thank God I'm nicely sheltered from such an awful life.

Raj Patel, Knightsbridge, London,

Each budget seems to bring us more and more benefits for people with excessive amounts of children encouraging the Karen Matthews's of this Country to spread their gormless and dysfunctional genes ever further. As a result we have the likes of this family on more or less every street on every Council Estate the length and breadth of this Country, living on State benefits and dragging their neighbourhoods down the toilet with them. Mr. Brown take heed.

tony, derby,

I would agree on what you've written. That's the way the modern world functions isn't it? Sit someone on the tree, stone them, gain pleasure, bring them down, and walk away to find someone else! The fact that has to be highlighted in Shannon's case is not the mother's sex life, negligence, corrupt mind or even the child porn issue but the amount time and tax payers money wasted on some rubbish!

BBC 4 today was talking about recession times coming up. Our environment is ripping apart and letting in deadly rays. Soldiers are dying in the middle east. Tibet has been banned from their own land for ages. Well, the list goes on! Question is, is it worth the media time, police effort, public attention and the taxpayers money spent on the Shannon Matthews case? I don't know! These are days when anything you say can become a controversy. I guess we are smart and intelligent enough to make our stand on cases like these, including Madeline's.

'The world is a stage' - Shakespeare

Kathir Vel, Edinburgh, UK

This article is totally bizzare! The Matthews case raises many important questions about our society and its decline and all Mick Hume can do is to turn it into some Marxist rant about how we fear the lower classes.

Andrew brown, derby, uk

We must remember Karen matthews was her self a product of the care system and now her children are the next generation of a broken family, its time we put pride back in to our society by giving children good decent role models who they can aspire to give them a feeling of wellbeing, so they can have a goal to achieve in life. love and security is the most important thing a child needs to grow up happy and content, what we are seeing is a repeat of Karens sad life leading to more chaos with her children, we must fix it now ,the way forward is in understanding the great big void vacuum which as led a mother into this very sad state of affairs, we need more journalists like Mick Hulme in educating us in the simple human interest concept of what is going wrong

Mary Morrell, Stockport, Cheshire, England

On reading the comments it appears to be a general idealism that the benefits system and its claimants are the route of all evil in this country. I have worked all my life, and therefore consider myself to be 'One of the Lucky ones' but would ask all those who deem it their right to call the 'Down Trodden' of society who claim all those benefits - How much benefit do you claim? How much do you claim in your Working Expenses, any Tax relief you may be entitled to, Tax Credits, Working Tax Credits, Tax relief on savings etc., Are they not infact a benefit? My point being we all have benefits of one sort or another its just we feel we have earned them. Unfortunately the values of our Grand Parents do not appear to be upheld in todays society and we always stereotype and misjudge people who appear to be less than worthy of our attention.

Christine, Ormskirk,

I was born and raised on a council estate some 45 years ago now. We had our share of neighbours who were less keen to conform to the standards and norms of our society. But they were a minority that were kept in check by the overwhelming weight of decency and trust shown by everyone else around. What does seem to be missing here, and elsewhere in Britain, is any sense of day to day community that will bond and mentor these elements into agreed standards.
We, as a society, have turned our back on the minority as we have 'bettered' ourselves and Britain now is nothing moore than a series of ghettos and we are all keen to preserve them. despite the present financial difficulties, we ae all too comfortable, have access to credit and benefits so that hardship is easily brushed aside by state, banks etc. We no longer feel the need to earn comfort, we expect it.

Andy Love, York,

Steve from London
Bang on the button the poor girl hasn't a chance (or the rest of the children in the family).
Why are people shocked at the state of the family this is happening across the country. Too many children being brought up by unfit parents who live off benefits.
Still I know that next time I get my salary advice note I can look at the income tax paid and know it is going to a good cause. Mr Brown and Mr Darling will see to it.
S H Scott

Stephen Scott, huddersfield, W.Yorks

To be honest I think a lot of people are just horrified and saddened that a child in our country could be treated the way that it is alleged Shannon has been treated.

So many of us live our comfortable middle class lives, blissfully unaware of poverty.


The Shannon Matthews case is a bleak reminder of how many people in our country do live and what a dreadful start in life so many kids get.

Jennifer, London, UK

The description of the people in these communities as powerless passive lumps is wishfull. In my experience they do cause damage and desctruction to our schools and community buildings. The police bill for the search for the child was £ 5 million..... i could use that in school to teach willing kids whose parents work and who plan a real future. The breeding of claimants to this extent is very noticeable to teachers in certain schools... same mother, troublesome child year after year another addittion, more rights quoted , more pyschologists , more statements to give the children EXTRA help, not the same as the majority ........but more more more for those who take, break and fake. Yes I get fake falls, fake claims of assault....and now we see fake child kidnapping
passive... NO , powerless No

fiona, plymouth ,

Personally I've not been terribly interested in this story any more than any other similar situation - the added dimension here has been the media talking to itself about modern Brtiain, which is a perfectly respectable thing to do but hanging the weight of social analysis around the neck of flawed and unhappy human beings involved in criminal acts (whatever those might prove to be) is rather cruel. Perhaps when the true facts of this case are revealed we will all be able to assess the situation more clearly but until then our media outlets should tread carefully and stop prefacing every story with "Shannon Matthews -whose mother has 7 children by 5 fathers" which is a dog-whistle for opprobrium.

Jonathan M Smith, Edinburgh, UK

its a shame i think this shows how desperate people get because of poverty. its not right what has happened but surely society needs to look at what it is creating

elizabeth, sherborne, uk

Utter tosh, this article should qualify for its very own Pseuds corner award. Criminality is criminality irrespective of the class status of the perpetrators. To be blunt it is this kind of apologist nonsense that has created the "entitlement" society in which we are forced to exist. Time for the correspondent to exit his "Ivory Tower" and breathe in the Pungent gases that are the prevalent atmospheric conditions in many of todays sink estates! This is not about some kind of metaphysical "observer effect" It is more about the large numbers of Individuals who will stoop to any level to make a buck!

T Wakeford, Grantham, Lincs

Why do you judge other people by your own standards? Personally I don't get any entertainment from this terrible kidnapping, but surely its worth highlighting the absolute pointlessness of the lives of these pathetic people if it raises the question; why should everyone else pay for their existance?

Jason White, Paris,

What crap. The McCanns had to put up with exactly the same amount of scrutiny, unfounded accusations and abuse and they are the epitome of middle class. Or "our folk" if you prefer. Wise up.

Kate, Cardiff,

40 years ago I worked in what we would now call the deprived areas of the Derbyshire-Notts coalfields. The Dewsbury picture of today bears many similarities. Little has changed - except for computers and mobile phones.

SH, Leeds,

If you don't feel morally superior to this family,you are doing yourself a great disservice.

steve, varna, bulgaria

Mick Hume completely, and perhaps wilfully, misunderstands people' reactions to these events and this family. It is not "prole porn" and we are not leering or laughing.
Rather this terrible story fills us with depression and despair at seeing such ignorance and disfunction so prevalent in our country.
The Matthews demonstrate the Welfare State in action; billions of pounds laid out on "benefits" to produce hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of 'families" just like this one.
Whilst I am of course glad that the little girl was found alive, I actually feel so desperately sorry for her. Being "brought up" by such a family, in Britain's state controlled dependency driven "welfare culture", the poor kid just hasn't got a chance.

Steve, London, UK

Ever been to Dewsbury? No, neither have I. It looks absolutely ghastly. But although I don't plan to visit, I need to know what type of people are being created there, because I am paying for it, as is anyone who pays more income tax than they get back in benefits. There is a genuine public interest in knowing why this brutality and squalor has come about, with the Meehans/Matthews only an extreme example of it. My guess is that this is the logical outcome of unlimited welfarism, and provides powerful evidence for urgent reform.

Colin MacKinnon, Oxford, United Kingdom

Enjoy?

Speak for yourself.

What is exposed is 'broken Britain'. Broken under Labour.

What perhaps you might consider is that thanks to the exposure given to this disjointed dysfunctional family its neighbours are viewing themselves as through a glass darkly.

TrevorH, OXON,

Well, in the midst of all this prurience there are stark warnings for the rest of us. What it seems to tell us is that those moral codes which many profess to hold are, in reality, a very thin veneer of 'civilisation'.

My view is that if the State continues to take away direct responsiblity from the populace it will have to find ways of enforcing some form of decency and morality. Trouble is, over the last decade the State, its servants, and our servants - the parliamentarians, have shown themselves to be completely unprincipled and amoral. At least the Judicial system can occasionally stand up and be counted.

Chuck Unsworth, London,

The respectable working class is still probably the majority in this country. These people are manifestly not in that grouping. They are they product of a welfare system with its perverse incentives not to work and to bring countless, unneeded children into the system that wil then prpogate the next generation of skivers and scroungers. What is wrong is that the rest of society gawps, complains and fails to analyse the situation and come up with a solution.

oldasiahand, Guildford, UK

When I was a teenager I recall my father - a Public Health Inspector - talking about "family life" in the awful Liverpool slums he had responsibility for.
Whole families living in incest, and thinking nothing of it. Perfectly normal behaviour.
Women cohabiting with random men picked up in pubs and producing one child after another.
Evidently times have changed little.

Clive, Monterrey, Mexico

rubbish. This continuing interest is not about prole porn. It IS about a community turning on members who exploit the community for personal gain, and about the baffling nature of child neglect.

shane, utrecht,

fair enough points, but please remeber that if the the allegations are proven true, that this bedlam is of their own making!

pat, The Hague, netherlands

It looks as if you've taken a single, perhaps questioning provoking analogy and strung it out to a whole article. The analogy between poking inmates with sticks and requiring our police force to ensure the safety of a young child and the civility of the neighbourhood is ridiculous. This sort of tone is reminiscent of Johan Hari, who makes the same sort of desperate and unsupportable claims in grinding his (not insubstantial) axe over the middle-class.

Dislike/distaste for the working class where it exists find its origins in the same reasons we might dislike any group of people who can be generalised into a category which bear undesirable traits. We dislike toffs for being out of touch with reality, spoilt, sounding stupid, driving Chelsea Tractors. In the same way, we legitimately dislike people who commit crimes, claim benefits or being up their children badly. It's simple.

The injustice lies where people are victims of stereotype and misjudged.

Joseph, London,