Deborah Orr: He failed to stand up for the people most in need - Independent Online Edition > Deborah Orr
It's just as perfectly, palpably plain though, that London is heaving also with poverty, disenfranchisement and nihilism. Walking into some pockets of deprivation is like walking into a war zone, with shops grimy and blackened enough to look almost burnt out, or children's playgrounds so neglected and abused that they mock the very notion of anything at all being "childsplay". Danger is a presence here too, but it is not charged up with glamour. It is threatening, sinister, depressing, dispiriting and hopeless. Not so occasionally the stabbing or shooting of a schoolboy, or a boy who should be a schoolboy, confirms that the threat of violence that pervades such places is quite, quite real.
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