The case of Raoul Moat still chills me. Yesterday CaMoron stood up in parliament and condemned those who showed sympathy for the gunman: apparently he has become a heroic figure to some. I do not, of course, is view, but nor do I simply dismiss Moat simply as an evil, vicious killer. The man needed psychiatric help; he was a disturbed, mixed up individual. It is folly to ignore the background of this case, and simply see it in terms of good and bad, as CaMoron apparently does.

This is what I find so unsettling. What provoked this attack? What lead Moat o act as he did? What failed in the system so catastrophically o allow this to happen? More to the point, I keep wondering what was going through his head? Why did he shoot himself. Simply to dismiss this as a case of an evil man run amok is far, far too simple, as it’s much more complex than that. What it says about how we treat the mentally inn in the UK I find particularly troubling.