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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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From my limited experience, it's that when it gets to the point of being violent, etc. that the working poor do want their violent relatives taken into care, be that hospital wards or even jail, but they can't get it done until it's too late (e.g. the person has committed some crime bad enough to be locked away). There is the natural tendency towards "my family and I love them" but they do tend to be more realistic about how things can go bad, because they have to live beside the consequences of the violent, criminal, and mentally ill:

As part of the mitigation by defence, the teenager’s grandmother read out a letter to the court, which she said she had written to give a glimpse into the child he was.

“I am not a mother who sees no wrong in a child. I never had anything to do with crime and I don’t condone criminal behaviour,” she said.

She said her grandson used to be sports mad, excelling at hurling and boxing. She said he changed when his birth mother introduced herself to him in the street and when she did not get what she wanted from him, his mother said she would harm herself. The witness said that her grandson never returned to boxing or GAA after that and began to get into trouble at school.

“His new friends were all involved in stealing bikes and using the money to buy drugs. I got many agencies involved but nothing worked. He would be awake at night crying and made three suicide attempts,” she said.