If you’ve ever been denied the use of a gift voucher or a coupon because it is a day out of date or received a parking fine for the front edge of your tyre is touching the forbidden zone (a double yellow line where I’m from), you may have thought to yourself – ‘How cruel’. There is also no doubt that despots like Pol Pot, Hitler, Mao and Stalin, depraved killers like John Wayne Gacy, Andrei Chikatilo, The Zodiac Killer and a whole gang of villains from the 20th century leant a new meaning to the word ‘cruel’.
But there are plenty of individuals, instances and practices that we don’t often hear about that really plumb the depths of human cruelty.