The Daily Mail front page you will never see

We will of course never see a front page like the one above. That is because the Daily Mail has a very specific agenda. It has spent decades trying to demonise people on benefits and now that Mick Philpott has been convicted of killing his own children they see no problem at all in stating that Philpott and by implication his crimes are as a result of the welfare system.

This is the very essence of confirmation bias. They don't like people who have lots of children on benefits. One of them is involved in a terrible crime. So they try to smear everyone on benefits by setting up Philpott as if he is somehow a representative of this section of society. He isn't. He is a horrible man who may well have committed similar crimes under any system. We now know that in his younger days he stabbed a former lover multiple times and nearly killed her. There is no suggestion that crime was motivated by our benefits systems.

If the Mail were consistent in their campaign to try and reduce motivation for crime we would expect to see headlines like the one above and lobbying to increase inheritance tax or even abolish inheritance altogether. After all there have been numerous cases over the years where greedy offspring have wanted to get their hands on their parents' money early and have killed them in order to try and facilitate that. Surely the "solution" to this problem is to prevent this motive in the first place? It might seem a bit simplistic but that fact hasn't stopped them on welfare.

The truth is that sometimes people commit dreadful crimes. Trying to link one-off cases like Philpott with something like the benefits system is frankly idiotic.