A Government that was elected in 1997 not least to improve the lot of the poorest in society has failed totally to do any such thing. It has failed to educate them properly, either to get decent jobs or to be decent parents and citizens. It has smothered them with welfare that is as expensive as it is destructive. It has chosen not to eradicate a pernicious drugs problem that is the root of most crime and social breakdown. It has sustained, almost to the point of celebrating, the non-traditional, dysfunctional family. A society can never eliminate its savages and barbarians, but it should, when it is so prosperous as ours, be able to make a reasonable fist of reducing their incidence and the damage they do. In this 12th year of a government pledged to serve the poor, the depravity and the breakdown among our underclass is as rife as it ever was in Dickens' time. And that shames the people who rule us.