Our esteemed Prime Minister has said:
It is absolutely clear that Raoul Moat was a callous murderer, full stop, end of story.
I cannot understand any wave, however small, of public sympathy for this man.
There should be sympathy for his victims and the havoc he wreaked in that community.
There should be no sympathy for him.
It frightens me that the man running our country sees this in such black and white terms. It means he believes there are irredeemably evil people and it means he lacks any understanding of the capacity within all of us to commit evil acts when subjected to the wrong circumstances. It also means he does not understand that sympathy for a killer and sympathy for his victims are not mutually incompatible. In my opinion, a person who professes an inability to understand such subtleties of human behaviour, especially in the face of a wealth of evidence, is lacking the key skills of logic and reason and empathy that I consider essential for such high office.
I also means he has fundamentally failed to grasp the concepts of compassion and mercy. Showing compassion to those we find attractive is easy; the biggest test of a person’s humanity is how much compassion they show towards those they cannot like. That David Cameron, the man ultimately responsible for all our foreign policy and diplomatic decisions, is unable to do that should be worrying our enemies and allies alike.
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I am writing the next instalment of the Food Addiction Chronicles. It’s long and requires some more in-depth research than my usual fare and I want to do this properly, so it will be several days at least before it goes up.
