The shooting dead of 11-year-old Rhys Jones as he walked home from football practice in Croxteth, Liverpool was a shocking tragedy. It has come as less of a shock, however, to see so many trying to stand on his coffin to make moral and political speeches about the state of the nation. The fact that nobody yet knows who shot the lad or why has left a blank space on which anybody can write their own script. That the killing appears meaningless has been widely taken as a licence to imbue it with whatever meaning you see fit.