KAREN Matthews, she of the face like a robber's dog and the parenting skills of a hamster, has yet to hear what time she will serve for engineering the kidnap of her nine-year-old daughter Shannon in order to claim a £50,000 reward. Whatever the sentence, you can be sure Shannon's psychological suffering will last longer.

Here's the thing. The kindly, liberal side of me would like to speak up for Karen Matthews as an avalanche of vilification comes her way, perhaps allow that she might have had a hard life herself. But on this occasion, frankly, the stomach won't wear it.

This was a story in which the characters could have come straight from the imagination of Dickens, but the deeds and details belonged unmistakably to 21st-century Britain.

First, there was the hankering after easy money. Karen Matthews saw her seven children as cash machines, there to dispense state benefits. The more children she had, the more money she got. Any parent on benefits will tell you that raising a child on what the government hands over is one of the toughest jobs going, but let no sympathy go Matthews's way on that score. As shown by the involvement of social services, and in the words of her own family, she didn't bother her backside about those children. They were left to bring themselves up as best they could, and for that there is no excuse.

Next to her desire for easy money, Karen Matthews indulged in that other deadly sin of the modern age: the desire for celebrity. Matthews looked as if talking to television crews on her doorstep was the most natural thing in the world. There were tears, sure, but these were the practised moves of a guest on the Jeremy Kyle show rather than genuine emotion. Contrast her appearance before the cameras with that of Kate and Gerry McCann. The McCanns have never looked like anything other than souls in torment, their faces stretched tight with suffering and exhaustion.

It was the disappearance of Madeleine McCann that apparently gave Matthews her grisly money-making idea. She took one of humankind's greatest fears, the abduction of a child, and exploited it ruthlessly. The community in Dewsbury turned out en masse to search for Shannon. Amid all the blah-blah yesterday about how the Matthews case was symptomatic of "broken Britain", remember the many decent people willing to give their time, and money, to get Shannon back.

Perhaps the most disturbing element of this case, besides the obvious harm done to the child, is the glimpse it offers into the hidden suffering of too many children in Britain today. Who knows how many are out there now, unloved and unwanted, passing miserably through each day like ghosts, not sure if they are going to eat tonight, never mind what they'll be getting for Christmas. God help them, because society seems to be incapable of doing the job.

CONGRATULATIONS to Sarah Brown on looking fab in that purple beret she wore to the state opening of parliament in London. The PM's wife should be grateful she doesn't live in Glasgow. Back when I gave two buttons about fashion (these days, leaving the house with a jumper on the right way round is a triumph), I bought what I considered a very natty grey cashmere beret from Saks Fifth Avenue. Having worn it endlessly in New York, I perched it on my bonce back in Glasgow and strode out the door, looking, I thought, quite the thing. I must have made it all of 10 yards before someone shouted, Frank Spencer-style: "Ooh, Betty, I think the cat's done a whoopsie on your head." Said item is now at the back of the wardrobe alongside a boxy beige mac, the wearing of which made otherwise kindly people break into Columbo impressions.

GUTTED. There's no other way to describe my feelings on hearing that the worst Christmas theme park in the world has shut up shop. How I was yearning to hot-sleigh it down to Lapland New Forest to enjoy the punch-ups between elves, see Santa having a sly fag behind the grotto and attempt to ice-skate in the mud. I don't know which is loopier: the organisers who thought they could get away with such a tacky endeavour, or the parents who shelled out £30 a time to show their children the "magic" of Christmas. Whatever happened to the simple ways of whipping up excitement, like advent calendars and leaving out a carrot for the reindeer?

ORDER, order. I for one would like to question the £2000 spent on "executive training" for Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, coppers' friend and scourge of whistleblowers. Granted, she has to appear confident before the media, but installing a brass neck can't cost that much, surely.

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