As you can imagine, the big one this morning on the front of all the papers is the murderous rampage lunatic taxi driver Derrick Bird went on around the North of England yesterday. Apparently he lost the plot because his mates took the piss out of him!
Here’s how some of the main headlines read:
‘He was a nice guy, he must have snapped’ – The Irish Independent.
‘Lone gunman kills 12 in UK during 3-hour attack’ – The Irish Times.
‘Massacre – Taxi driver guns down 12 in three-hour rural rampage’ – The Irish Examiner.
The story goes that apparently Derrick Bird became depressed when his mother was diagnosed with cancer. Friends and fellow taxi drivers interviewed shortly after the attack say he get a bit of stick off his mates, and on Tuesday night took something another taxi driver said to him to heart.
So, next day he arrives on the scene with a shotgun and a semi-automatic hunting rifle and starts shooting. He drove to various locations around the north of England, shooting people at each stop, until he finally turned the gun on himself.
The Irish Independent is running another couple of interesting stories on its front page. One is a report that Minister for Foreign Affairs Michael Martin is preparing to escalate the row with Israel by booting one of its officials out of the country.
They also carry the story of Ivor Callely who kind of thumbed his nose at us yesterday in a row over his ridiculous €80,000 expenses claim. Brian Cowen became aware of the bill and requested that Callely give a full account in writing. Instead, he went into the Seanad and said he would be happy to be investigated and failed to give the written account. Give him the boot! What’s the Seanad for anyway? Sack the lot of them and turn the place into something useful. A strip club or whatever.
The Irish Times has chosen to give mention to the good ship Rachael Corrie – an Irish aid vessel headed towards Gaza and very probably a date with Captain Hook, Blackbeard and other members of the Israeli special forces. Israel, propped up on a wooden leg and with a parrot squawking on its shoulder, has said it will refuse entry to anyone trying to sail into Gaza. And by refuse, they mean massacre.
The Examiner is kind of slow on the up-take today – they’ve ran a story entitled, ‘Nine new legal highs replace banned drugs’. Sure half the tabloids were running stories about the return of the head shops yesterday. Do these people not read the paper like?
