| Author | Message | ||
     Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.156.233.202 |
Anyone heard about those shootings? It's odd, but it seems as though people in general are a little shruggy about it. Funny, that. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
I assume you mean the ones in Cumbria? People seem to have grown accustomed to tragedy, don't they. It no longer shocks them. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.156.233.202 |
Or even worse, interest them. | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
Yes, the shock value certainly seems to be less than when it happened in Hungerford in 1987. Why this should be, I can't even guess. It's not as if violence really has increased in the past 23 years. There has always been lots of violence in the world. I suspect that the percentage of violence in human society is fairly static and has been for the past 1.5 million years. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.156.233.202 |
My feeling was that maybe people understood it nowadays. My kids felt sorry for the bloke, for instance, as did a friend of theirs. That wouldn't have happened once upon a time. Does understanding reduce the shock, I wonder? I have to admit feeling a huge sense of reality while it was going on, feeling more alive than usual. I was even a bit sad when it turned out he hadn't just vanished, that the threat wasn't still hanging in the air. Daft, that, isn't it? | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
The people I've come across - online and in "real life" - haven't been at all "shruggy" about it, Tony. The general feeling I've been getting from everyone - myself included - is great shock and sadness. It reminded me of the Hungerford massacre of course, and Hungerford was a great shock to me when it happened as that's a town I knew well from my childhood (my dad worked there for a while). It seems more shocking, somehow, when things like that happen in quiet, sleepy places. I guess we get accustomed to hearing about gang-related shootings in places like London, Liverpool and Manchester, but when some poor sod (yes, I feel sorry for him too - and his family) flips and goes crazy in a small town/village it just feels so unexpected and shocking. At the moment, too, a bridge which I regularly drive across is all boarded off both sides whilst the police continue to look for the remains of those Bradford "vice girls" in the River Aire. We see pictures like that regularly on the telly and don't bat an eyelid, but see it in reality in your own town - with police standing guard, etc - and it really hits home. RIP to all the victims of these recent, senseless killings.  | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.106 |
Nobody I see, or work with, in real life has even mentioned it. Not one soul. I find that very weird. | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I'm discomforted by these news crews camping out there 24 hours a day, asking anyone passing what they knew about it, and transmitting their shocked responses to the world. Today, we had the appalling spectacle of the murdered taxi driver's family coming to the scene of his death to lay flowers, all heartbroken - and yet being callously filmed from close up by half a dozen different camera crews. I understand that we need to know the news, but it seems very intrusive to me when, from the moment tragedy strikes somewhere, Sky, the BBC etc, are all suddenly coming to us live from the very scene of the incident. I'm a former journo myself, but frankly, this blanket coverage of major disasters is all a bit ghoulish. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
All journos are cunts. What's also really disturbing is the fact that every chav on the streets claims to have known the killer extremely well just because they got into the back of his cab a few times...rather sick that; publicity hunting via the medium of tragedy. Modern life is twisted. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
On the day it happened there was a guy on the news who was the clearest example of reverse evolution that I've ever seen. He had no front teeth and talked reaeeeaaaaallllll sssssllllloooooowwwww like he'd been stoned for the last 5 years at least. He said that one of his friends had told him there was a guy outside with a gun who was shooting people - so he went out to have a look! I think he was the stupidest person I've seen on TV outside of a big brother house. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
That's typical southern media bias, mate - they'll have hand-picked him to interview. I cringe whenever the north east is on the news, because they track down the most unintelligable pond life they can find to represent the area. If you took your queues from the BBC news programmes, the north east is filled with tracksuit-wearing toothless imbeciles who can barely string a sentence together and say "like" after every other word. Oh, it is? Well that's okay, then. I'll get me coat, like. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
queues or cues? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
Sorry, Einstein. I promise to improve my spelling the next time I post on a message board. | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
> Modern life is twisted. As was ancient life. And life at all other times. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
Yup. But I exist in modern life. I have no first hand knowledge of the ancients. Therefore I reference modern life. Capeche? | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
But your comment implied that 'modern life' was different (i.e. more twisted) than 'ancient life', and I don't believe it was. Dig? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
No such implication intended. That's you fusing horizons, that is. Nowt to do with me, squire. | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
You calling me an horizon fuser now? You goddam longitude licker! | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
Ha!  There is simply no response to that. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I have to admit the news of this tragedy came at a time after I'd just read the most convincing and devastating fictional portrayal of a homicidal nervous breakdown - and the warped logic behind it - that has come my way. I was inside the mind of an ordinary joe rationalising the unthinkable and then a real life ordinary joe went on a "mindless" killing spree. The book and this news story will be forever linked in my mind now. That's a compliment, Ramsey. 'The Long Lost' is your most human novel to date... hauntingly so. There is no one better at making homicidal madness almost understandable. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
"There is no one better at making homicidal madness almost understandable." I think that, with all due respect to the Landlord who is very good indeed, patricia Highsmith beats ramsey on that front with Ripley (among others)and Paul Theroux managed it as well with Chicago Loop. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
You're so right, Weber. And I'm just about to start 'Ripley Under Water' with a mixture of excitement and poignancy that I'm coming to the end of his run (of luck?). As I've said before, Tom Ripley is the most charismatic anti-hero, psychopathic killer in literature (forget Hannibal) but what Ramsey does so well is to depict ordinary people, as recognisable as your next door neighbour, on the verge of stepping over the line and then he takes you there with them - something I find a uniquely disturbing experience. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.156.233.202 |
I've just found out the Hungerford Massacre bloke collected Action Men, like me. Weird to feel even the tiniest connection with such folk. It's funny, but reading about Hungerford and this new stuff I found my writey head coming on, and feeling the Hungerford guy the most 'fictional' and 'creative' of the two killers. His stuff was quite imaginatively twisted. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.106 |
Didn't Christopher Priest write a novel at least partly inspired by the Hungerford killings? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.239.78 |
Ruth Rendell does looney killer well, too. Forgive jargon. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.158.156.168 |
Same again. But different. |