Yet more murder on the streets of Britain.

Yet more murder on the streets of Britain.

The year is but six days old an already the dark evils of murder are terrorising the streets, roads, back alleyways and troubled inner city council estates of Britain. It hardly seems a year ago now since similarly deadly attacks stalked the country like a repulsive smell that refuses to go away. It almost feels like some horrible contamination that seems to be spreading across Britain like some rampant disease and yet none of us seem any closer to definitive, long term solutions in the foreseeable future.

The tragic death of a honest and law abiding father on a train in Surrey in front of his horror stricken 14 year old son can only serve to underline once again the social illnesses that still continue to eat away at the once rich fabric of a British society that used to be completely at ease during the 1960s- or so we thought.

But this is just one incident in a whole sequence of murders, stabbings and deeply abhorrent acts of violence and aggression that seem to usher in the beginning of every New Year. Sociologists and seemingly deeply academic social commentators have immediately condemned such wicked acts of despicable genocide as the by product of broken homes, neglectful parenting and a lack of love.

Quite what possessed a group of clearly bored youngsters to set out one morning with the intention of barbarically attacking and then stabbing an innocent father to death seems utterly beyond any comprehension. True, we have been here before on a painfully familiar basis with almost unreasonable regularity but still the forces of law and order seem helpless to stem this bloody tide.

And yet here we are again in the first couple of days of 2019 and most of us are mourning and grieving the loss of a gentle and loving father who adored his family and who simply asked for nothing more than a quiet and civilised beginning to the year in London with his son. How on earth now can a youngster apparently free from the cares of the world who just wanted to get on with his life be so cruelly robbed of a father who now unwittingly found himself at the centre of an unnecessary argument and then fall prey to a savage knife attack?

With an ever increasing fatality list of knife attacks now becoming an almost common occurrence it is hard to know where to go from here? We know the underlying causes of these brutally disgraceful assaults. these sick and  criminally disturbed minds who  continue to make their presence felt at any time of the year. It is easy to point accusing fingers and hold up to account such sick and revolting behaviour but how to root out once and for all these vicious outrages.

On New Year's Day another young life was taken in the early hours of a New Year's Eve party for something he could never have imagined would happen to him.  Of course we are horrified, of course we shudder with fear when our civil liberties continue to be violated by man's senseless inhumanity to man. There are now though the almost standard reactions; the endless police investigations, the questioning of those who have now been arrested and the inevitable post mortems. How much longer are we prepared to tolerate this ugly blight that shows little sign of stopping or simply disappearing?

But how much closer are we to finding some deeper insight into the twisted minds of those whose only aim in life is to kill innocent people without any hint of remorse? Of course we will now be subjected to a deafening cacophony of voices from those who would insist that corporal punishment be meted out at once, that Death Row is the only place where these youngsters belong. Some would advocate the return of hanging or ultimately the electric chair and this can only be considered a perfectly valid punishment for these monstrous and random killings that will surely leave only lifelong scars on the poor affected families.

These are troubling times for Britain although if you were listen to some well meaning folk this is just yet another symptom of a deeply rooted and destructive malaise that is slowly eating away at all levels of society. They blame gang warfare on dimly lit street corners, the humorous exchange of drugs, the rap language now frequently employed on now dangerous streets. Then there are  the foul obscenities, the careless disregard for the rules and regulations, the arrogance, the open threats and then yet another outbreak of disillusionment because there's nothing for them to do and nowhere to go.

It is easy to be judgmental under the circumstances since we all know what we'd like to do these with these wild children, these angry young men without conscience or shame. We would stick them in a rotten prison cell for the rest of their lives and hope that the key will be thrown away  and that we can simply wash our hands of them for the duration of their lives. How some of us would like to line them up and then let them die at the hands of a firing squad. There could be no more fitting punishment.

Sadly. we are also told that the our prisons are still over populated, out of control and no longer capable of accommodating the kind of criminals who are no longer in charge of their mind or senses. The statements of the obvious are beginning to sound like the ramblings of a demented killer who quietly cowers away on a stand, ludicrously defending their innocence because they didn't mean to do it.

The fact remains though that a young 14 year old on just another train journey with his father is suffering and will continue to suffer the loss of a man who he must have idolised. He will be painfully traumatised, always be lavished with care and compassion. But nothing will bring back his doting father with a university degree and the warmest of hearts. We can never imagine what exactly will be going through his mind at the moment but we hope that his life will return to some semblance of normality.

This is not the way we would have like the New Year to follow its natural order but it has and this has to be the time when the nation comes together and tries to find a way out of its collective state of shock and numbness. In an ideal world justice will be seen to be done and the British courts will administer a life sentence that means life and not just a temporary five year slap on the wrists in a musty cell. Our thoughts will always be with this heartbroken young man. Of course he will be lonely and of course he'll be in severe pain but we must hope that time will almost certainly be the healer.