Many of you may have read today about the mass shooting in Cumbria, England that results in the deaths of 12 people and left 8 people in hospital and many others injured.

The shooter was a taxi driver called Derrick Bird who, according to many people, was not someone who had any interest in guns, who was a nice guy. Something tipped him over the edge and created this tragedy today.

However, what caused Mr Bird to begin this spree is not what I'm talking about at the moment.

I'm more concerned about the fact that this tragedy happened and I didn't know about it until I was searching through news websites a couple of hours ago.

That fact is I remember exactly where I was in 1996 when the news first broke of the shootings at Dunblane Primary School. I remember that the radio was on and the programme was interrupted with a bulletin about it. Details were sketchy at the time but they soon filtered through. Thomas Hamilton had gone on the rampage killing 16 pupils and a teacher.

The news was dominated by this for days. Yet I find that no one I was working with today even mentioned this. Events have been unfolding since it happened with new information coming from here there and everywhere yet not one person mentioned this.

At work where people have constant access to the news or Internet not one person spoke of this incident.

So what does this tell us?

Well, I'm assuming that people saw this on the news sites and TV news but it just didn't register to them as anything major. In 1996 Dunblane was a major incident but now, in 2010, the news is told and then it fades. Sky News still has a ticker along the bottom of the screen with various bits of information but they've moved on.

So now this is normal in society? A multiple shooting is something that drops interest after a few hours?

It wouldn't surprise me if that was how it was. What used to be horrific now is normal. We take it all with a "yeah that's terrible" and move on.

I find that a terrible reflection on society. I am someone who loves the news. In 2001 I watched hours and hours and hours of news coverage as the events of September 11 unfolded. I only took a break when the news began to repeat itself as new information was hard to come by and the USA closed down.

I can't accept that a multiple shooting becomes dead news after only a few hours.

We spoke about Dunblane for months and years afterwards. What about Cumbria?

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