CUMBRIAN PRIVACY

Beware Northerners bearing shotguns.  That would seem to be the moral of the week, as  Britain hears of a killing spree by an armed man.  The usual platitudes are being reeled out: "Were these guns licenced?" - yes, "How can you tell if someone will become a spree killer?" - you can't, "Should the gun laws be tightened?" - any tighter and people will just have to resort to buying them illegally.  24 hours after the Cumbrian massacre (let's just call it what it is) and anyone who wants to add their two penn'orth is adding it by the bucketload.  Including me.

Due to my working hours I caught the fallout of the killings on the  miracle that is the "rolling 24 hour news".  This service is largely redundant 90% of the time, but comes into its' own whenever there is a terrible disaster unfolding somewhere in the world.  You can be safe in the knowledge that your digital provider will pump the information straight into your living room while you remain cosy and detached listening to someone else's horror.

This is fine while it lasts.  Unfortunately for the press, today Cumbria has gone back to it's default setting of "the place where hardly anything ever happens".  The journalists are still there in droves waiting for the latest statement from the police, the local MP, the local hospital (how can updates on patients' conditions be of import to anyone but their families?) and any poor soul who consents to talk to them.  One journalist justified the fact that locals were wandering up to them and giving their side of this multi-faceted tale as "part of the grieving process".  What, having their image flashed across the televisions of Britain as interviewers press them for every single gruesome detail?  The press are hardly impartial observers, however much they protest otherwise.  The events must be reported, but already the bottom of the barrel is being scraped.  Viewers do not need to see the crumpled faces of the broken friends and relatives of the dead as they lay flowers.  The reports being sent are beginning to border on the exploitative.

There will be no firm resolution to this affair as Derrick Bird is dead, and only he can give the definitive account of why he chose to do what he did on June 2nd.  The rest is educated guesswork and speculation.  This can be done without the press on Whitehaven's doorstep coldly filming the aftermath of the unthinkable.