From our new weekly columnist Gemma Hunter, who debates life's dilemma's and ongoing social issues.

By Gemma Hunter

We watched Obama soar to victory as the housing market crumbled Stateside and beyond, Boris take hold of the Olympic torch as the oldest and most trusted banks evaporated without trace and Brown cling on to that job he had wanted oh so much for oh so long as he steered himself unintentionally but directly towards the next biggest iceberg.

But for the majority of the nation’s readers and indeed those unfortunate enough to be based near Dewsbury, there is only one woman still making the headlines for all the wrong reasons, standing out like a luminous hazard sign, representing just about everything wrong with the nation.

There were of course plenty of other losers to choose from before Karen Matthews reared her pasty, malnourished head.

The degenerate halfwits who grace Jeremy Kyle’s couches every morning, taking pride in not knowing whether the children in their home are biologically theirs; the desperate hopefuls queuing up outside every audition based show in the land, with no passion, direction or desire other than securing their five minutes of shame or Kerry Katona slurring her thoughts in a chemically induced fashion as she accuses the media of selective editing and deludes herself into believing she ever had the kind of ‘reputation’ possibly worth maintaining.

But Karen Matthews and her Shameless-inspired circus was something else entirely.

From the moment she first popped up on ours screens, mumbling and grunting appeals with the eloquence of a startled rhinoceros, we knew this wasn’t exactly The McCanns, despite the initial suggestion of similarity.

The open-minded amongst granted unwavering support in Karen’s direction as she touched the hearts and nerves of mothers up and down the country, clinging onto their own children, united by the shock and the unimaginable fear of what might have happened to Sharon.

The less forgiving took one look at the benefit-scrounging lump who fondly referred to her handouts as ‘wages’ and whose colourful love life had produced seven children by five fathers and concluded that it was a miracle she responsible for anything at all and her daughter’s disappearance was undoubtedly her fault.

The bespectacled toy-boy lover, Craig Meehan, shuffling nervously by her side throughout, with all the confidence of a 12 year old who had just had his Playstation 3 removed because he refuses to communicate with anything else, did little to inspire hope or change the average viewer’s perspective.

But very few of us, including the residents who campaigned tirelessly for Sharon’s return and the police who parted with over £3m to mount a completely unnecessary search, could have predicted what was about to unravel.

Last week Karen Matthews was found guilty of kidnapping her own daughter in an attempt to grab a huge ransom.
During the time Sharon was held captive by Karen’s toyboy’s loner uncle, she was not only tied her up to restrict her movements and in turn, ability to make noise, but dosed her up with a selection of tranquillisers to make her easier to handle.

Karen’s sister claims she also used sedatives during the summer holidays to keep her the children quiet and even taped a plastic bag to one baby's bottom in order to save money on nappies.

Other relatives claim she never cleaned her house, cooked proper meals and at times even lost count of how many children she had in her brood.

But money for Karen herself was never an issue. She drank heavily, smoked 60 cigarettes a day and received benefit payments of almost £300 a week, which went up every time she had another child.

The details are damning and once again pull back the curtain on an underclass wedded to a belief that the rest of society will continue to subsidise their idleness, with a culture of dependency that saps ambition and undermines any notion of personal responsibility.

Brown’s grandiose announcement in the Queen’s speech earlier this week to eradicate child poverty, preferably as soon as possible, is without question a step in the right direction.

The only problem is, Blair promised the same thing 11 years ago, and despite the annual expenditure of about £150 billion on welfare, things continue to get worse as the nanny state ploughs on blindly restricting and poking into every aspect of the hardworking, taxpayer’s lives and continues to prop up a large number of people who have never ever worked and never ever will, creating a situation in some parts of the country where two thirds of the population are either on the state payroll or in receipt of its benefits.

Albert Einstein once pointed out that there are three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed.

Greed and stupidity were clearly in abundance throughout the Matthews’ saga and now Karen fears for her life as she is placed in solitary confinement with a price on her head currently valued at the price of a packet of 10 cigarettes.

A society where a mother puts her own child’s life at risk and betrays the entire nation for the prospect of a few extra pennies is clearly a snapshot of how low Broken Britain has sunk.
Brown’s plans on tackling poverty are one thing.

Making a dent in this deeply distorted psyche is another challenge entirely.