The Raoul Moat affair has uncovered a seething pit of northern madness

What on earth is the government going to do about all these deranged northerners running amok shooting people? The more callous among you might well argue that it doesn’t really matter, as these madmen are only shooting other northerners, and so it is therefore none of our business. Perhaps. But there is no guarantee that the next deranged northerner will not get on a train, if he can afford it, and start shooting at us, instead. This is the thing; you simply cannot tell with nutters, there is no logic to their mayhem. There is a case to be made for employing the consensual, democratic approach adopted by the Cumbria and Northumberland police, which is to let each respective deranged northerner shoot several people — to get it out of his system — before the law is brought in to constrain him. Some people have criticised the police for this, but it seems to me as good an approach as any other.

One thing, though, is for sure — until a week ago, Cumbria’s Derrick Bird thought he was odds on to win the much coveted Mentally Ill Northerner of the Year Award, to be presented by Yorkshire’s Karen Matthews — who, if you remember, hid her young daughter, Shannon, in a drawer beneath a friend’s bed for a month or so and claimed she’d been abducted — at a glittering ceremony at Batley and Spen Working Men’s Club in December. And then suddenly Northumberland’s Raoul Moat has snuck in, snatching the commemorative pig-iron beer tankard from Derrick’s hand. Derrick must be gutted, as well as dead.

You think this is all in bad taste? Believe me, this is nothing. This is nothing. The Raoul Moat affair has uncovered a sort of seething pit of madness which well exceeds anything achievable by even the lowest form of satire.