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Regarding the arson case above, my ex has the misfortune of being housed by the same housing association that housed the victims and she and her neighbours have been harrassed, intimidated and threatened since 2014 by a couple of young drug dealers also housed by that same housing association.

The local police have given my ex and her neighbours a lot of support but harassment and slyly conducted drug-dealing are very hard for them to substantiate with clear evidence. The local police on the QT place the blame with the housing association's policies of favouring scumbags over decent tenants (my words not theirs) and of having a policy of 'not making people homeless' which in effect means there is in the end no final sanction against the scumbag tenants ie they aren't evicted.

Part of the reason I've not been active at VEF much this last few years is that I've been spending a lot of time supporting my ex in coping with the drug-dealers and even more so with fighting the housing association.

I'm glad to see these murdering arsonists sent down for a long stretch but I'm very aware of the culpability of the housing association in protecting scum tenants and treating decent tenants as if they are the criminals.

I noted in the newspaper reports on the verdict yesterday that the Housing Association denied that the mother in the case, who the local police confirm had contacted them repeatedly, had ever contacted the housing association to ask to be helped to move away from the arsonists although the mother said she had approached them.

I've been supporting my ex through her troubles with her neighbours and know that this particular housing association tells outright lies, to the degree that the local police have advised us to conduct all our interactions with the housing association by email or face to face with a recording device running so that the housing association don't have deniability.

The arsonists are the killers in this very recent case but in my opinion the victims' god-awful housing association were complicit in the deaths at least in as far as contributory negligence.