Total revulsion

Surely there are few groups that could start a conversation about dead children and end with David Attenborough.

Go Gransnet!

When it is made by David Attenborough!

When is any documentary serious or exploitative not entertainment?

By definition all are made to be shown on television for people to choose or not choose to watch in their free time. Does anyone watch television only as a penance?

Explain why not J08.. both were making money out of using vulnerable and dysfunctioning people as entertainment. They are not serious documentary programmes.

J08 - yes it is both great big hypocrites!

absent I do so agree.

Not fair to lump Anne Widdecombe together with Jeremy Kyle.

I think the Anne Widdecombe programme could have served to alert social services. Although I guess, to all intents and purposes, the children themselves were being cared for satisfactorily.

I think I might have screamed at the van if I had been in the area.

It is okay to comment in pretty much any way at all on any thread so far as I understand as long as no one is being aggressive, abusive or insulting to other individuals. I am just bored to death with the same smug and ill-informed comments about people on welfare coming up time and time and time and time and time and time again from the same posters on whole loads of different threads. That, in my view is deeply patronising. I didn't think this was one was appropriate for doing the same old same old same old. I see it as self-indulgent and ridiculous. I am allowed to see it that way. Okay?

stansgran I am concerned for that family too and I hope they are being looked after. I also hope we never find out about the help they are getting and that the media leave them alone. I suspect they are out there trying to track down all his other 11 children.

Difficult to understand such mentality unless they were actually related to the children who died. I didn't see it. Perhaps they were the mothers of all his other children??? Now I am going to be told off again for flippancy

What about the other family who left with the "mistress"? Are social services looking at them? I saw the news where the perpetrators were driven off with people screaming at the van. What drives people to go and scream at a van?

If at school the children were clean & tidy, well behaved, making at least OK progress what are schools to do?

I think it is very sad for anyone to comment that a thread is pointless or rediculous or any other patronising statement. Is it intended to imply some sort of superiority? If you don't like a thread, please just leave it with or without comment, it is not necessary to be unpleasant.

I can not believe this family were unknown to Social services. When I was working as a teacher in Brum we often had to nag and nag an overworked social services to get them to take us seriously. Some of the cases were pretty grim and some finally lead to the children being removed...not enough sadly.

Glad they had a woman judge today and they have been charged appropriately.

I do not see anybody defending murderers' sensitivity either. If you can possibly take any more on the depths to which these people sank, read Allison Pearson in today's Telegraph (can't do the link) and just stop and think where were Social Services? Where were the teachers? Where were the neighbours or the other people with whom they must have come into contact, in this appalling case?
Let's not be distracted by the gutter press from looking at the true facts and both forming and voicing, if we so choose. oour own opinion. Maybe society keeps quiet too often.

You are so right Nanaej. These programmes are disgusting and sadly, they feed into that sense of self righteousness that is felt by so many 'Lord, I thank thee that I am not as other men'.

AW is not a stupid woman. She knows exactly what she is doing by taking part in a programme like that.

As for 'defending the sensitivity of murderers' where did that come from?

Philpott has extensive previous and is clearly a wicked and violent man. I fully expect that he will get the life sentence which he deserves. It would also seem that he has groomed very young and troubled girls from disfuctional families. It seems odd that no agency felt able to intervene, but then, we don't know the background.

But NONE of this justified the DM linking his actions with all those who have to claim assistance from the state (to which 97% will have contributed in tax and NI in any event) because they are poor.

This tragic case of 6 children dying simultaneously is horrendous and that is why it is rightly newsworthy. The family circumstances are sordid and that adds more news value to the story but sadly every day children die or are brutally abused by parents/carers.

My despair is also directed at Jeremy Kyle and the Ann Widdicombe type shows that are voyeuristic in style and attract participants and viewers that are vulnerable in all kinds of ways. I make no excuse for Phillpot but his noteriety and power was fuelled by those programmes. It is not enough for the media(press /TV) to say it is what people want..

Like the 'soaps' where the characters lurch from crisis to crisis the JK show makes it appear 'normal' to be dysfunctional. It really saddens me but I have no idea how to begin to challenge it.

I b----y despair.

We have all seen threads digress but this is now taking the biscuit. This should not be about newspapers, politics or anybody point scoring over subjects, usually the DM or Sun, they repeat over and over again.

I am now with Petallus, this thread feels uncomfortable given the heart breaking subject and it has taken a turn for the worse. 6 children died for goodness sake. I find it amazing there is a possibility this thread could turn into defending the sensitivity of 'murderers' because they have been demonised in the media in a fashion that offends some GN's.

All as bad as each other

m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/03/dont-get-mad-about-use-of-philpotts-tarnish-poor

I take your point, gracesmum, but often posters don't look at who started the thread when they voice their views - so not personal.

If you feel you daren't express an opinion, jane and ana how do you think I felt to be told that the thread I had started to express my opinion on this dreadful case, was "pointless". That sounded like a put-down to say the least.
However, I am not that easily put down.

Yes, indeed, Jane - I don't think you are at all alone there!