Raoul Moat Dead

Raoul Moat died in the early hours of Saturday morning lying wet through on the ground on a field in Northumberland. Clearly, he was not a nice man but the more i read about him the more I think he was a walking tragedy slowly advancing to his own death. Not just over the last week but over many years. He has been arrested many times over a 10 year period but only successfully prosecuted once. During the last week the police mounted an extraordinary force to capture just one man - even if he was armed. It seems that Moat never left the area around Rothbury, yet, in spite of the thousands of men employed in the search it took the whole of a week to find him. It seems that Moat was helped by friends who, like him, disliked the police intensely.

The story of Raoul Moat is just an extreme example of something that could happen to thousands of men in this country whose lives have been starved of success. How many men do we know with complicated love lives, children by various mothers, never getting married, never having a stable home life, never having any long-term job prospects, do bouncer work as a means of satisfying their needs for a macho image and inflicting a bit of violence. And also meeting plenty of women who wanted a bit of casual sex with a macho man. With these men image is all; designer clothes, expensive performance cars, etc.

The first thing that goes wrong is the unstable home life in childhood, poor performance in school and immediate post-school unemployment. And when children appear - as they surely will - the downhill journey continues and the foundations are laid for more problems with the next generation.

I don't know all the answers. But the fact that the Moat did what he did - murder and attempted murder and then an unnecessary suicide suggests failing yet again of our vastly expensive social services. In this case, it seems that Raoul Moat's intentions as far as his ex-girlfriend were concerned were known and it seems that he had arranged to pick up the guns immediately he was released. The prison authorities knew quite bit but seemed to have been quite relaxed about either stopping him leaving the prison or informing the police.

Raoul Moat died wet, abandoned, hungry, lying on the ground surrounded by hundreds of armed police. Maybe the police Tasers made him kill himself but at that point in his life he had already reached the bottom and a man like him could see no point in continuing his existence.

Several newspapers anxious to have the best shock! horror! headlines told us that Raoul Moat was a hulking bodybuilder, addicted to steroids. The intention being to suggest that such an individual was not a normal human being and that his behaviour was fuelled by 'roid rage. Everything I read trotted out the same old tabloid stories but made worse by an aura of respectability created by attributing the report to someone in either the medical profession or - even worse - psychiatrists and psychologists. The fact that there is little real scientific evidence that 'roid rage exists and that most of the alleged side effects of steroids are much exaggerated is just by the way.

But all too often the facts can spoil a good story.

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