Raoul Moat - the last word

If ever there was a cunt needed killing, it was Raoul Moat.

I have been sickened over the last forty eight hours by the positions some people have taken in defending this man and in attacking the police who hunted him down.

Let's cut through the bullshit. This nutter was let out of prison when he should have been sectioned. The prison services notified the police that he was a clear and present threat to his former girlfriend, yet they let him out and the police took no action to protect the people he subsequently shot. For this I blame the police - but not for anything else.

Moat went on to shoot a copper in what appears to be a random act before going to ground in Rothbury. He was cornered - eventually - and negotiations to get him to surrender went on for over 6 hours.

Now his brother is blaming the police for his death. He reckons that hitting Moat with a taser gun might actually have caused the shotgun blast that killed him. Apparently, he offered to go in and try to talk him out. Well perhaps you should have, Angus, and then you might just have been on the recieving end yourself.

But I'll tell you plainly, if I had had a bead on him then it wouldn't have been a taser I would have been shooting at him. It would be a 44 magnum.

Then his uncle jumps on the bandwagon. He reckons that "I know he's done a terrible, heinous thing... but I don't think he was a threat to the public." Well,the only reason he wasn't a threat to the public - that's the public he threatened to start gunning down next, if you remember - was because he was surrounded by armed coppers.

At the end of the day, he was a mad dog that needed to be put down. By killing himself, he saved us the bother of a trial and the expense of locking him up and keeping him in Broadmoor for the next fifty years.

Frankly, if I had had a gun I would have shot the bastard in cold blood - just like he shot that copper.

But I guess it is to the eternal credit of our police that they exercised just a little more restraint that I would have...

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Guns, the community and me

I have just returned from a week's holiday in a cottage in the village of Boot.

A little over a week ago, this tiny community was blighted by yet more mindless and senseless shootings. Many people were killed or injured. My thoughts go out to them.

This is not the first senseless killing spree of it's kind. Many years ago, I lived near Hungerford in Berkshire where you may recall that a lunatic with a hunting rifle sat at the top of the hill overlooking the High Street and picked off terrified shoppers at random.

Some years after that, we remember the maniac in Dunblane who walked into a school and murdered young children. This second occasion resulted in a knee jerk reaction from the government of the day to ban all legally held hand guns in this country.

And yet, here we are again...

I raise this serious subject because I was one of the gun owning community. I used to shoot handguns for a hobby. I was good at it and used to compete at county level. I owned a .22 calibre Browning automatic and a Colt Python .357 magnum. To prevent another Dunblane, they took my guns away.

It was a stupid decision, it hasn't worked and it never will.

When I applied for a firearms certificate, I first had to join a shooting club and undergo a course of instruction in the proper handling of weapons. After six months, I was allowed to apply for my licence. This involved submitting references and an application form to the police, followed by a period of positive vetting.

The certificate allowed me to purchase specified weapons only. These were to be stored in a tool proof locker and my security arrangements were inspected by the police. If I wanted another weapon, this had to be applied for separately and added to the certificate.

Why then was a member of my club allowed to own 12 different pistols including a Walther PPK? The only permitted use was for target shooting. The PPK has a very short barrel and is really only suitable for self defense. I defy you to hit a target at 30 metres. Don't believe what you see in James Bond films.

The answer of course is that he wasn't properly policed. Nor was the Dunblane murderer.

The shooting community in the UK are amongst the most strictly regulated in the world. Done properly, this would be enough. We are responsible law abiding people in the main.

When I applied for my certificate, I remember the desk sergeant telling me that no member of the public should be allowed to hold a gun. I pointed out to him that if I wanted to rob a bank, I wouldn't go through all this rigmarole to get hold of a gun first. I'd just go down the nearest east end pub and rent one for £500 - and if it was returned unfired, I get £250 back! He looked at me thoughtfully. Then he said "You might have a point."

Things are slightly different today. You just go across to the continent, buy a gun and ammunition in the nearest shop and then stick it under your back seat as you drive off the ferry.

And that's why you will never stop these incidents and why taking my licence away achieved absolutely nothing...

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Sod it! I'm off to the lakes

Yes. I know. I've just come back from Greece. So what's going on?

Well, it's like this. Work is the ruination of the drinking classes. So with all you hard working people out there worrying about whether to go abroad with it's attendant risks of strikes and ash clouds, I decided it was only fair to check out a UK holiday.

It's tough - but someone has to do it.

I'll leave you a few Blue Peters ('one's I prepared earlier') but normal abuse will be resumed shortly....

I was going to leave the above whitty little message as I am going to the Lakes for a week, but I have been overtaken by events.

It transpires that the peaceful little village I was going to (Boot, see picture) was the centre of Wednesday's tragic events and that the mad gunman in question seems to have killed himself in the woods just behind our cottage.

It is difficlt to know what to say under these circumstances especially to the friends and families of all those directly effected, so I shall simply say that our thoughts are with them...

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