first of all can i express my sympathies to the friends and families of all those who were effected by this horrendous act.

with regards to prevention as someone who lives in the country ( but who isnt one of the fox hunting crowd ) I have to say that a total ban on firearms is not practical , farmers need them & their are tens if not hundred’s of thousands of responsable owners who will never be a problem.

On this mornings “the big question ” on BBC1 ..the one that kept breaking down every 2 mins…a lady whose son was i beleive murdered a number of years ago was very passionate in her view that all guns should be banned. I can totally sympathise with her but cant endorse her view as it is just not practical .

Having said that we are all only a short step away from madness , as has been demonstrated many times. I would think that there will need to be some changes in the licencing set up….i just am not sure what will work.

Back to the good old days ehhh ?

Sad news, whatever his faults he was a fine actor.

Would be nice if it got in the air again but reckon there is little hope of that happening.

We frequently see two examples operating around here, one from the the Garda in the Republic and one I presume a British army example operating from Aldergrove….still prefer to see one of the old Beever’s buzzing about !

A lot of people wouldnt think twice about looking up at one of these , presuming that it was a twin prop doing a commuter flight . Mind you they are almost impossible to pick out at the best of times !

In a word..Yes.

The fact is that she is big enough and bold enough to know exactly what she was doing.

I doubt somehow that the journo just happened to think this might be a good idea, i would think that this was not the first time she had done something like this, there has to have been a history of these “fund raising” events !

Now dont get me wrong i am not one who has much time for the antics of the press..or at least some members of the press but on this occasion I reckon that it was something that needed to be brought out into the open.

Are we talking about evaders who were never captured or escapee’s from POW camps as well ?

I stayed in a Gite in Normandy a few years back where a Scottish Pilot had been hidden having been shot down . He & the brave people who his him had an interesting time up to the time that American Forces liberated the area. To hear the story from the grand daughter of the folks who helped him was a fascinating experience. I understand that he continued to visit up untill his death which i think was sometime in the early 1990’s.

Obviously there are a fair few POW books out there but one with a bit of a difference is ” Not all Glory ” by Victor Gammon.