{"id":1647,"date":"2008-09-03T23:44:48","date_gmt":"2008-09-03T22:44:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/ijwp\/mt.php\/2008\/09\/03\/pity_the_horses_but_not_the_murderer"},"modified":"2025-10-09T18:10:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T17:10:07","slug":"pity_the_horses_but_not_the_murderer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/mt.php\/2008\/09\/03\/pity_the_horses_but_not_the_murderer","title":{"rendered":"Pity the horses, but not the murderer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Zoe Williams, in today&#39;s Guardian, on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/2008\/sep\/03\/ukcrime.pressandpublishing\">mawkish obsession<\/a> with the horses and other pets which belonged to the family believed to have been murdered by its indebted father a couple of weeks ago in Shropshire, who shot not only his wife and daughter but also his horses and dogs, before setting fire to his house and killing himself:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nWe persist, though, in seeing a certain nobility in the man who destroys everything to avoid &quot;shame&quot;. Sure, he must have been crazy, but in a nice way. He has his priorities the wrong way round, but that doesn&#39;t mean he didn&#39;t treasure these lives that he took possession of so freely. As the Sun (or rather, &quot;a source&quot;) said of Foster: &quot;In the end his state of mind must have been, &#39;If I can&#39;t have all this, nobody will&#39;. He adored his wife and daughter so he must have been in a terrible mental state to do what he did.&quot;<br \/>\nIt makes no sense, this stuff: to talk in one sentence of a dog-in-the-manger motivation so idiotic and immature you&#39;d balk at it from a toddler; and then in the next breath to attribute an emotion as deep and encompassing as adoration to this petulant, wanton, arrogant man-child. Other newspapers have scented the act with an Egyptian grandeur, as Foster interred himself, pharaoh-like, with all his &quot;belongings&quot;, his wife and pets and offspring, in the rustic tomb that was so soon to be repossessed.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zoe Williams, in today&#39;s Guardian, on the mawkish obsession with the horses and other pets which belonged to the family believed to have been murdered by its indebted father a couple of weeks ago&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[678],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p17bgV-qz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1647"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41773,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647\/revisions\/41773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}