Family values

Whatever the fate of the missing nine year-old Shannon Matthews, or the identity of the killer of 15 year-old Scarlett Keeling in Goa, can anyone doubt from listening to the interview this morning (0730) on the Today programme with Shannon’s mother Karen ( who boasts seven children by four different fathers) and stepfather Craig Meehan — in which they both batted away claims by members of the family that Shannon was an unhappy child who may have run away because Craig beat her -- or from the interviews with Scarlett’s mother Fiona McKeown, who is now up in arms because of questions being asked by the Goa police about how she could have left her fifteen year old daughter in Goa to fend for herself under the ‘supervision’ of her boyfriend and his aunt, that at a certain level in British society the most basic rules of nurture, parental duty and civilised values have gone down the tubes along with orderly family life?