This piece of mine appears in the First Post.
Neil Clark: The egotistic culture of free market capitalism is to blame.
It's tempting to see Derrick Bird’s killing spree in Cumbria as 'just one of those things' - a freak, isolated event that has no real sociological cause. It's certainly a line taken by right-wing media commentators. "Terrible deeds like this happen every so often. Nothing could have been done to prevent it, little can be done to explain it," opines political blogger Iain Dale.
In fact, much can be done to explain it.
US-style killing sprees are a relatively recent phenomenon in Britain, occurring for the first time in Hungerford, Berkshire in 1987. We didn't have such occurrences in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, or 70s - and many countries in the world still don't experience such events. So where have we gone wrong?
The answer is that we've Americanised our economy, and consequently are paying a very high social cost.
You can read the whole article here:
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