HINDSIGHT mixed with ignorance is a dangerous blend.

Some of the criticism of the emergency services, especially the police, in the aftermath of the appalling shootings in West Cumbria, has been at best ill-founded and, at worst, utterly disgraceful.

Radio phone-ins and national newspaper columnists who have probably never been within a hundred miles of Cumbria were quick to spout their poorly informed criticism of the handling of this unprecedented incident. It’s all too easy, as the BBC’s Panorama program did this week, to drive round the route Derrick Bird took on that fateful morning and suggest how the police might have headed the killer off and prevented more shootings.

But this was a taxi driver, a man who knew the geography of the country roads like the back of his hand. A loose cannon whose every move was unpredictable and dangerous.

A lot is being made of Cumbria having one of the smallest police forces in the country. Suggestions have been made that it would have been more efficient had it been merged with a larger force.

But officers would still have had to travel some distance to a part of the county which is not blessed with express communications.

I think most reasonable people would say Cumbria Constabulary acted as effectively as it could given the totally unique, random and shocking nature of this atrocity.

Sadly Cumbria has not been out of the newspapers or off the television screen for several months. First the floods, then the bus crash tragedy. Then, and one must hope finally, the shootings. How much more can this poor county take?

In the circumstances, with one major event after another, I think our emergency services and communities have done very well to cope and, while lessons can always be learned, criticism is particularly churlish and unwarranted.

Tragedy is always a good time for the “experts”, of course, and haven’t they had a field day this past week or so.

Sociologists, criminologists and psychiatrists have all been trotted out in front of the cameras to give their opinions on what prompted the West Cumbrian murders. Few of them have had anything of value to contribute.

Of course there is going to be massive media interest when something as terrible and rare as this happens. One can’t help feeling uneasy about the intrusive nature of some of it, notably the interviews on television with that nine-year-old boy who witnessed the first shooting in Whitehaven. Asking a youngster if he’s had any nightmares since the killing was totally inappropriate and should not have been allowed to happen.

It’s been Cumbria’s very own annus horribilis. The county now needs some space to lick its wounds and begin the long process of recovery.

END OF A VINTAGE

AFTER 30 series and 290 programs it’s time for the old boys to finally shuffle off into the Holmfirth sunset.

In a changing world, there’s always been something reassuring about the gentle overgrown schoolboy adventures of the Last of the Summer Wine veterans.

Quite apart from the skilful writing of Roy Clarke, who has penned every single word of every episode, Last of the Summer Wine has attracted a host of wonderful actors down the years. If ever a man deserved an honour for giving millions harmless pleasure then it’s him.

Okay, so it probably doesn’t appeal much to a younger generation brought up on violence, sex, so-called reality and talent shows.

But as the BBC prepares to pour away the last bottle of summer wine this autumn, it appears to have lost sight of its older viewers who still enjoy this charmingly uncomplicated and affectionate style of comedy.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the Beeb had something worthwhile to put in its place. Maybe the summer wine has aged and lost a bit of its flavour as some of the original cast have popped their clogs, but there is still a substantial viewing public out there who are old-fashioned and proud of it when it comes to TV programs.

Last of the Summer Wine has been called a “rural fantasy”. There was something strangely endearing about three old men defying age with their hopes and dreams, their lives interwoven with the local community.

They could be annoying, particularly to Norah Batty, one of the great comic creations of the television age. But the humour was shrewdly observant, never nasty. The characterisations subtle and perfectly drawn.

My television set went on the blink recently. I realised, as it stood blank screened in the corner of the living room for a few days, that I could actually survive in life without it and how little I watch BBC and ITV these days.

I don’t follow the soaps. I am sick of the violence that permeates just about every other program, before and after the watershed. I have no interest in talent shows and Simon Cowell. Big Brother is getting the push and not before time.

If I do watch television, other than for the sport, it’s to tune in to repeats of the really good programs we used to have like Only Fools And Horses, Blackadder, Fawlty Towers and Last of the Summer Wine. I’ve seen some of them so many times I can just about recite the scripts, word for word.

I think that’s a sorry indictment of the dearth of really good new stuff on the box and the fact that most television nowadays seems to have little to offer the substantial volume of older viewers, many of whom rely on TV for their entertainment.

Given the current dearth of home-grown comedy, I can’t help feeling we are being short changed.

MELVYN’S BAD HAIR DAY

SOME of us, who are going a bit thin on top, are full of envy for Cumbria’s cultural supremo Melvyn Bragg who, at 70, still has a handsome head of hair.

According to Daily Mail diarist Ephraim Hardcastle, Lord Bragg got a bit put out when asked about his hair at the Hay literature festival the other day.

Clearly Melvyn thought such a question trite after he had just given a talk about presenting ITV’s South Bank Show, which was recently axed.

He told the questioner he didn’t have time to get to the barber as often as he should and anyway there are good hair-growing genes in the family.

The Hardcastle column described Bragg as dealing with the question “irritably”. Ironically his talk was entitled “Final Cut.”

DON’T TAKE YANKS FOR GRANTED

SO you’ve got the flags, the wall chart is up, the new flat screen TV awaits switch on, you are wearing your England replica shirt and you have enough beer to last a month. Why, you might even have adorned your front garden with a B&Q garden gnome complete with the flag of St. George on his pointy hat.

England kick off their World Cup program against the USA today. The Yanks ought to be a pushover. A doddle.

But wait. I am just about old enough to know about Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The date: 29th June, 1950. England, known then as the “Kings of Football,” lost 1-0 to the USA, who had lost their seven previous internationals and were a rag bag of part-timers.

Is there a Joe Gaetjens waiting to deflect a shot into the England net again in 2010? England fans should not take any game for granted, especially after the embarrassment of 1950. Otherwise that chanting bottle opener, the singing model tour bus and the nodding bulldog are all going to look pretty silly by tomorrow morning. And a lot of shops are going to have tons of unwanted stock to clear.

In those days we had Stan Matthews, and still we couldn’t win. We must hope and pray that history does not repeat itself.