Tag Archives: mick philpott

The Philpott case: at last, a reminder of the reality

By Stephen Tall | Sat 6th April 2013 - 1:45 pm

The debate over the Philpott case has raged all week, but mostly at a tangent to the reality of the case.

Thanks to Grace Dent’s stellar column in today’s Independent, I’ve finally read through Mrs Justice Thirlwall’s summing up. It’s concise, shrewd, plain spoken, unsparing: no legalese, just clear sense.

It returns this case to where it belongs: an individual story of one man’s obsessive compulsion to dominate and possess all those around him, in particular ‘his’ women. It’s well worth reading the whole judgment in full.

However, there are three sections I wanted to highlight…

The welfare debate and the age of the trollemic

By Stephen Tall | Thu 4th April 2013 - 9:25 am

I decided to invent a new word yesterday:

Is “trollemic” a word? If not it should be. Trollemic = deliberately OTT argument to generate controversy & make rational debate impossible.

— Stephen Tall (@stephentall) April 3, 2013

It’s the welfare debate that’s prompted it, but it could be any other topic on a given week.

Yesterday saw the Daily Mail publish a typically sensationalist front page blaming the welfare state for the tragedy of six children being killed by their parents. On Monday the Mirror shouted ‘Shameful’, with a cartoon showing Thatcher, Cameron, Osorne and Clegg banging in the final nail of a coffin marked ‘RIP Welfare’.