A beautiful part of the world (I visit it often). One cannot imagine the sheer horror of today's events...the world's media arriving on their doorsteps.

Tonight's C4 News was "live" from Cumbria, with Kristian Guru-whateverhis name is "standing" in a street in Workington.

How does this make the news more relevant?

I wonder what the "tipping point" (the point at which something has to be "live") is?

Big story I suppose. In terms of impact - 7/7 killed around 52 people in a City of 10 million. This was 13 people in a county of less than half a million. The impact probably greater.

It is noticable that the last two Gun Sprees were in 1987 and 1996 - both under Tory Governments. Not one under NEW LABOUR. Then Cameron comes in and we get another in 2010......bizarre.

Maybe they were all three disgruntled Labour voters - or mind controlled slaves of New Labour ?

Locked Out wrote:

And many of those expressing such horror at the events of yesterday will tonight be once again filling their brains with Bruce Willis or some other pumped up, testosterone charged moron gleefully and without even a whiff of remorse blowing someone away and reinforcing the message that killing is cool.

I'm not a soap fan but I do think its strange that a soap episode has to be postponed to save someone's feeling.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8719224.stm

Can these people not tell fact from fiction ?

Post of The Week by Locked Out. You are right.

I refuse to watch "Shoot em up" stuff - cant stand it and it does create this mentality.

BR wrote:
I refuse to watch "Shoot em up" stuff - cant stand it and it does create this mentality.

Is it the stuff that creates the mentality or (like the Jeremy Kyle show) is it just stuff produced to feed the mentality (or absence of ... if you see what I mean).

superb post, LO and welcome back from your break.

Had to laugh at the media though, particularly Sky News, who are allegedly skint. They had no one available in the area for a good 3 or 4 hours so had to make do with the oh so old fashioned phone calls and maps on screen.
The BBC, there with an OB within an hour.

Thanks for your comments, all. I had a look at a thread on another discussion forum on the same subject and was stunned by the tone. While some posters were putting some thought into what they were posting others betrayed a level of idiocy which made even cynical old me gasp at their lack of grip. Here's one brilliant idea put forward. Reintroduction of the death penalty for people who do this sort of thing. Well great. Let's hang someone who's already shot himself. It's such a brilliantly insightful piece of logic that I'm truly surprised no one else has thought of it. Thinking like that goes way beyond stupid, and I love it that no one here appears to be that pointless. Which, I guess, is why I post here.
This subject was discussed {probably too briefly} on last night's QT. The panel
{even the usually reliable and pragmatic Matthew Parris, who gave me every impression at each turn of the programme that he's beginning to give up entirely, which is tragically sad} all appeared to agree that knee jerk legislation is the last thing that's needed, and in the main I'd agree. What was more disturbing was the almost breathtakingly complacent consensus that the extant legislation is tight enough. At one point Leanne Wood actually advanced the theory that nothing should be changed because "some people need guns in the pursuit of their livelihoods". And that's reason enough for taxi drivers to own apparatus whose sole purpose is to damage, hurt, destroy and generally harm? I'm not sure about Cumbria, but most UK taxi drivers manage to eke out a living without the assistance of a .22 with an impressively phallic and lethally accurate sight.
I'm on the sex offenders' register. Which means that once a year I have to advise the police of my whereabouts. I also have to keep them abreast of any alternative addresses I will be using for more than seven days in any given year, as well as telling them if I'm going outside the UK for more than three days. And once a year I'm visited by my Police Liaison Officer who checks to see if I'm OK and whether or not in her view I pose a risk to the population. This is because I have demonstrated a tendency toward a particular behaviour and I accept that it's necessary. There are more than forty four thousand and seven hundred other people on the Register in the UK {according to The Guardian, 22 April this year}.
I don't know the figures for UK firearms and/or shotgun owners, but I'd guess that the figure for at least the former is possibly less than that figure of forty four thousand, and seven hundred.
Yet there are no such checks and balances on people who wish to own and use fireams or shotguns. People like me {and I don't wish in any way to excuse myself here} are highly visible to the police and are regularly monitored. Vanishingly few of us reoffend.
All three truly terrible firearms incidents {Hungerford, Dunblane and Cumbria} of recent years were planned, initiated and carried out by people who legitimately owned the lethal weapons they used to commit the carnage they visited on their victims. Their rights to own and use the weapons {let's call a spade a spade} are seen as inviolate by those who like to refer to the shooting of things - the inanimate along with the animate - as "sport" as well as politicians who number those who enjoy blowing living things out of the sky among their friends. With much patronage and money involved in the trade in firearms and "field sports", it's unlikely that the gun-toting loony is likely to soon become as extinct as those he dreams of presently snuffing in a blaze of self empowering glory.

So my question to anyone who's interested is this;
Why am I, who is in charge of nothing more lethal that a computer, the subject of far more intense scrutiny than someone who wishes
{with little reason other than they like killing or damaging things} to own a gun?
And isn't it about time we began viewing the gun-lover with just as much suspicion as we attach to our local paedo?

This week Derrick Bird killed 10 more people than Ian Huntly {who I would not give comfort to either}. Huntly became a monster immediately. I wonder if Bird will ever attract such a nomenclature. I doubt it.

Apologies for the length of this post. If you gave up ages ago this apology is pointless. If, however, you've stuck with it, thanks for your kindness and consideration. I hope it made some kind of sense.

a better explanation here where someone finally agrees with an old lefty like me...have I not been rabbiting on about the destruction of whole communities in Britain for years?..yes I have!

www.thefirstpost.co.uk/64126,news-commen...-bird-murder-suicide