So ends a week that shames 'civilised' London. A gang of savage teenagers murders 16-year-old Shakilus Townsend, stabbing him repeatedly as he lies helpless on the ground. His last words are: 'I want my mum. I don't want to die'.

He was just the latest victim of a deeply worrying nihilism engulfing parts of our capital. Last weekend, another 16-year-old, Ben Kinsella, was knifed to death.

Hamouda Bessaad, 34, was killed on Monday. Dee Willis, 28, died a day later.

And what a terrible advertisement for Britain it was, the ghastly brutality inflicted on two brilliant French students, Laurent Bonomo and Gabrial Ferez.

Just two of many: French students Laurent Bonomo (left) and Gabriel Ferez are just some of the latest victims of the knife culture in London

All this in one week: an orgy of violence that is taking a particularly terrible toll on the young, with 18 teenagers killed in London since January, dozens more murdered in other cities and thousands admitted to hospital every year with stab wounds.

No wonder our knife culture attracts international attention, with French papers warning their readers about 'jungle' London. So are our own authorities treating this crisis with the seriousness it deserves?

This week, for example, the Sentencing Guidelines Council issued the pitifully limp advice that possessing a knife should only be punished with a fine.

Meanwhile, the liberal commentariat and the BBC blame newspapers for irresponsibly alarming their readers about crime. And Home Secretary Jacqui Smith smugly proclaims that knife crime 'is not more serious than it has been'.

Really? Could this be the same Home Secretary who is so nervous about walking round her constituency after dark? Whatever the official figures say about the supposed 'reduction' in crime, she can't possibly be ignorant of the bleak reality in many inner cities.

So how to stem the violence? At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, it would help if police were more visible on the streets. Robust sentencing by the courts wouldn't come amiss.

More pertinently, we need to recognise that knife crime reflects a deep social malaise that won't be solved without a major shift in attitudes. Isn't South Wales chief constable Barbara Wilding right to say that the gang culture flourishes because of the disintegration of family life?

Her analysis isn't new. Iain Duncan Smith's report for the Tories on Breakdown Britain reached the same conclusion long ago. And for years this paper has argued - often as a lonely voice - that the greatest single cause of our social problems is family breakdown.

It's no accident that 70 per cent of drug addicts and young offenders come from broken homes. Nor should it be surprising that rootless, unemployable teenagers who never had support or security at home find those things in street gangs.

To be fair, the penny is at last beginning to drop, even among the chattering classes whose right-on, non-judgmental 'liberalism' has done so much damage to family life over the years.

So shouldn't this terrible week encourage politicians - who for decades refused to acknowledge the urgent need to support marriage and the family - to seek a cross-party consensus on what can be done to mend our broken society?

Two fingers to decency:

What a revealing snapshot of the true state of British democracy.

Food prices are up. Fuel costs are through the roof. House prices have collapsed. Families are feeling the pinch. Taxes are really hurting. And what is the response of our elected representatives?

Why, the two-fingered salute. Far from showing they understand the public's pain, they refuse to reform their bloated expenses, which enable them to leech off the taxpayer without proper checks.

Those MPs jostling at the trough not only include 33 ministers (who don't give a hoot what Gordon Brown thinks) but moneygrubbing Tories such as the appalling Sir Nicholas Winterton and his wife Ann.

Right Honourable? What a sick joke.