Mairead Philpott, jailed for 17 years for killing her six children in a house fire, is to appeal against the length of her sentence, her lawyer has sa...
The welfare system, not benefit claimants, deserves the full, unmitigated might of British grumbling. Why? Because the current system does not reward any attempt to find work and no one should be expected to develop a social conscience while foregoing personal gain.
So who are the people on benefits, really? The answer actually seems to be most of us. 64% of families, and about 30million individual people - half the total population of the UK. The people on benefits are our friends, colleagues and neighbours, our families, ourselves.
On Monday the Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, was challenged by a northern market stall trader to live on £53 a week. This concept caught fire as an online petition was set up and quickly received over 450k signatures.
In love? No one else approves? Clearly, suicide is the solution - but not until you've taken out your wife's cousin then her other cousin - who is also, somehow, her fiancé. No, it's not something the Mormons dreamed up, it's what kids are learning in a school near you, in shameless Shakespeare's rogue tragedy Romeo and Juliet.
Ed Miliband has attacked George Osborne for linking the case of child killer Mick Philpott to reforming the benefits system, as some Labour MPs expres...
This week accusations flew, rhetoric abounded and, with the Philpott case, one newspaper made a particularly grotesque leap to try and paint this convicted criminal as a poster-boy for what they decried as the welfare "lifestyle". Meanwhile, on the ground, huge changes are taking place to benefits that will affect millions of ordinary - and, dare we say it - hard-working families.
Why do those on benefits have to be caricatured or characterised in one way or another at all? There are thousands of decent, 'normal' people who are genuinely impoverished, and try to make ends meet as best they can
The house where Mick Philpott killed his six children by torching the property as they slept will be demolished, councillors have promised. The cha...
A football stadium fell silent on Saturday in memory of the six Philpott children killed in a house fire started by their father. Supporters, staff...
It's the controlling aspect of Philpott's personality which appears most relevant. The welfare benefits aspect of the tragedy has preoccupied the media, but Philpott's behaviour was not that psychologically unique in terms of what the research on filicide reveals.
It was said by the prosecution in the trial of Mick and Mairead Philpott that they had started the fire at 18 Victory Road in order to "frame" his mis...
David Cameron has stepped up clashes with Labour by insisting the case of child killer Mick Philpott did raise "wider questions" about the welfare sys...
The week catapulted into play with April Fools, a slew of joke stories hitting newspapers on Monday from the liberalist Guardian goggles to the Mirror...
As our television screens and newspapers were filled this week with endless images of Kim Jong-un and Mick Philpott, I wasn't worrying about threats posed by North Korea or narcissistic killers. I was wishing more people read Theodor Adorno.
Dreadful people do dreadful things - it is the nature of these people that is to blame not the 'system'.
Not a day goes by where I'm not reliably informed of yet another anecdote and example of hatred towards the disabled.
The Liberal Democrat leadership has stayed silent on the row over whether the Mick Philpott case is linked to benefit reform, but former minister Sara...
Ed Balls has attacked George Osborne after he appeared to link the case of child killer Mick Philpott with the need to cut benefits, saying the minist...
Mick Philpott did not commit this crime because he was on benefits, but because of the narcissistic and controlling person he was. It would be a backwards step in our understanding of human behaviour if we start viewing people's actions through a prism of their income. The Philpott children were much loved; they had siblings and extended family who will undoubtedly be suffering terribly from their loss. I hope that Mick Philpott's living children will be supported not stigmatised, as Fred West's children have been, by dint of birth through their grief.
If we as a country brought back the death penalty, what of the risk of wrongful convictions? Could you live with the thought of being a juror who ended up sending an innocent man to his death? I certainly couldn't that's for sure.
George Osborne has been branded "sick" by Labour after he appeared to link the case of child killer Mick Philpott to his wish to cut benefits. Wans...
Moving from one deeply troubled individual with a history of drug problems and criminal charges to painting welfare claimants as selfish and irresponsible with one broad sweep of the brush is inexcusable journalistic distortion of facts.
Mick Philpott was described as a "disturbingly dangerous man" with "no moral compass" as he was sentenced to life in jail today for killing six of his...
Mick Philpott wrote to a friend about how he and his wife would "rape each other" after being cleared of starting the blaze that killed six of his chi...
