I thank you for the lightning that shoots up and sparkles in the rain

OK so this is my last post on temporary celebrity dead ginger nutter Raoul Moat, even though he's still a trending topic on Twitter (mainly people reposting jokes at the expense of his admittedly silly name) and, unbelievably there are over 3000 people on the "RIP Raoul Moat You Legend" page.

As London Misfit points out in the comments to the last post it appears that he was tasered during the standoff, whether by Gurning Copper or someone else I guess we will never know. I heard two different accounts of said taser incident. The first one, that they zapped him after he had shot himself, seems a bit off to me. I mean the guy had just fired a shotgun at his head - it would be pretty obvious, even to the police who sometimes aren't the sharpest chisels in the toolset - that he wasn't going to be doing anything dangerous any more so hitting him with 20,000 volts seems a bit like overkill to me.

The other question, and one I'm sure will be asked over the next few weeks, is that did they zap him unsuccessfully before he shot himself and, crucially, did that cause him to shoot himself? Now from where I sit (on the outside, making generally uninformed guesses) this seems more plausible. It was pissing down and he had a lot of thick clothes on so I imagine that a taser, which to work properly has to get the little barb things to contact the skin of the target, probably got blocked by the soggy clothes and didn't take him down as desired. I'm also wondering if said soggy clothes just conducted the electricity round his body and caused a muscle spasm whilst his finger was on the trigger and blammo, instant dead Geordie.

Only not quite so instant, as he died in hospital a couple of hours later. Now I would have thought (again, with nothing to base this on apart from it seems to make sense) that a shotgun under the chin at point blank range would, when discharged, blow your head clean off your shoulders. Maybe as well as causing him to pull the trigger the taser caused him to miss a bit.

Anyway it doesn't really matter. He's dead which means my taxes aren't going to keeping him in chokey for the rest of his life which is a good thing. If it were me in charge up there instead of Margaret Beckett and Shergar's bastard love child I'd have said "first one of you with a clear shot, drop the bastard".

However one last thought. If one whackjob with a sawn-off and six cartridges can have the resources of 10% of the entire armed constabulary thrown at it, can you imagine what would happen if 20 or 50 people were to do what Moat did at the same time as a co-ordinated attack? You could destroy a country that way. For fuck's sake nobody tell the mussies.

To the gurning copper at the Raoul Moat standoff

Hello, yes you, the gurning copper with the taser.



Look I know you get a bit upset with people taking pictures, especially pictures of coppers, but might I give you a spot of health and safety advice. If you are going to turn your head, grimace and berate a member of the public for having the temerity to photograph you in the course of your duties it would be a really good idea if YOU TOOK YOUR FUCKING FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER OF YOUR SODDING WEAPON!

Thanks for listening.

Grumpy.

PS: Apparently former footballer and celebrity wife-beater and pisshead Paul "Gazzer" Gascoigne turned up in Rothbury last night, pissed as a newt, wanting to take his old mate "Moatie" some chicken, a warm coat and a can a lager then sit down with him and do some fishing. A local radio station managed to get an interview with him which is hilarious... go have a listen: http://ht.ly/29y6m

Anybody seen a Raoul

You know for a ginger haired body-builder ripped to his tits on steroids he's proving rather elusive isn't he?

Mind you plod are not exactly covering themselves in glory here because despite flooding Northumbria with any copper who can be more or less trusted to hold a gun and not point it the wrong way, flying about in helicopters and apparently getting the RAF to strafe anything that moves fly over in a Tornado with a thermal imaging camera they seem to be sigularly unable to find him.

Of course this is leading to a few wags gently taking the piss at the competence of the Northumberland Constabulary: http://twitpic.com/23rywn

Actually in more than a few cases not that gently. In fact you don't have to dig too deep on Teh Interwebs to see a rather weird phenomenon developing - that of a psycho nutcase who has shot his ex-girlfriend and her new bloke rapidly becoming something of a folk hero.

Actually on reflection it's not that strange. Moaty-boy's stroke of genius, albeit one more by luck and paranoid delusion rather than careful thought, was to say "I'm only going after coppers" and then taking a pot shot at some unfortunate plod in a panda car to prove his point.

Now there's a considerable number of people out there who don't really like the police, nothing serious, they're not going to have ACAB¹ tattooed on their knuckles any time soon but years of state nannying, stupid laws unthinkingly enforced, random "terror" searches where you know you're being searched just so they can tick the "we don't target mussies" box, people illegally stopped by plod from taking photos and sundry other minor injustices has got quite a few people's backs up. As Raoul says we're not a target and as plod start to look more and more incompetent I can see how your average bod can sit back and almost enjoy the spectacle of the police being made to look like bungling incompetents by the most unlikely of folk heroes.

The police really haven't helped themselves by saying "Ah, we have information that he's now a threat to the general public" and then when asked what kind of threat the Police Chiefette who looks like Margaret Beckett's love child with Shergar pops onto the TV to day "Er... we're not going to tell you." You could hear the cries of "Oh yeah? Chinny rec-on" all up and down the nation.

So where is he. My guess is he's in a bar in Ireland watching the news and laughing. Or he's crawled into a hole and killed himself.

I think we should ask that octopus who can predict footy matches.


¹ Stands for "All Coppers Are Bastards"