Something happened today that affected me profoundly.

It's a very long story and will be the focus of a major show next week in the paper I edit.

There are so many aspects to it; most are at least disturbing, some are truly horrific.

The story is about the way some people are expected to live - in real danger and squalor, looked down upon and often mocked, totally powerless, despairing, neglected and ignored.

This of course is bad enough (if "bad" could even be considered to be anywhere near an adequate description). But there is another, nagging concept which I have been unable to shake from my mind since.

It is the concept of betrayal.

The concept that nothing has changed since the darkest days of Thatcher and her "survival of the fittest" acolytes and henchmen.

Nothing has moved forward one jot for those unfortunate (damned?) to a life on the sink estates, stuck in the generation after generation "Jobseekers" nightmare, stuck in a world which you or I would find incomprehensible and utterly terrifying.

They want the same for their kids as anyone else. Security, a safe place to go and play, an opportunity to earn a living, some bloody respect. In short, to be given a chance.

And I find it difficult to understand, let alone forgive, those who DO have the power, the influence and the ability to change things. Yet they do nothing. Well, nothing other that spin deceit and platitudes and then sit back toasting their own smug brilliance.

I'm going to stop going on now, but I'd love you to read some stuff by a Hero of mine, John Pilger, who wrote the following words in response to his disgust at Thatcherism.

Words written more than 20 years ago.

But can you not hear the echo reverberating, louder and louder, today?

And are they not a warning to those complacent with power to learn from recent history?

"Of course educating people 'once more to know their place' may face insurmountable difficulties.

Civil disturbances in those parts of Britain where Government policies of 'de-industrialisation' together with institutional racism have left fewer than 10 per cent of the young with any prospect of a practical purpose in their lives have become commonplace.

Following the riots of Handsworth, Brixton and Tottenham in autumn 1985 the political 'consensus' was briefly reinstated as Labour Party leaders joined with the Government to focus the public's attention on the criminality of what had happened, not on the causes.

A gloating speech by Enoch Powell, calling again for repatriation - sending the victims of Government policies and of racism back to where most of them had not come from - was described by the prime minister as 'very interesting' and 'worth reading very carefully indeed'."

'When the truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.' - Yuri Yevtushenko