The elephant in the room is the closure of many a secure mental health units across the country. In favour of more open door facilities. It's all fine and dandy when these individuals are taking their medication. But along with these less secure units, come lesser moderation and monitoring. It only takes somebody to feel like not taking their medication, and tragedies can happen.

Now this is an excellent point.

Care in the community was a disastrous policy. How many incidents like this have we seen in the years since?

Forget the colour of his skin and concentrate on the ultimate get-out clause - mental illness.

Denying mental illness while claiming Jesus spoke to you while you were cleaning out the rabbit hutch.

Just the average day for the lazy preacher.

Are you and jesus saying this guy wasn't mentally ill?

Well, what's the criteria for being mentally ill these days?

You tell me?
The insinuation that he wasn't, came from you, not me.

Problems with logical thought
A sense of unreality
Unusual or exaggerated beliefs about personal powers to understand meanings or influence events
Fear or suspiciousness of others or a strong nervous feeling
Uncharacteristic, peculiar behaviour
Developing irrational beliefs
Serious disturbances in perception (hallucinations)
Hearing and seeing things that others don't

That's just some symptoms of mental illness.

How about the belief somebody is sprawled out on a big fluffy cloud upsairs?
You've gotta be a bit cuckoo to swallow that one, surely?

Well I would class that as an irrational belief, but then I'm not a mental health worker, so if I were to suggest Kirkstaller should be sectioned for his own and the general publics safety then I'm not sure what credibility my suggestion would carry...

If the murderer says Jesus/Allah told him to do it is that ok?

Yorkshire's most infamous serial killer was sent on a mission fron the big chief upstairs so it could be true.

They are just some of the symptoms of some and varied psychotic mental illnesses.

Re, our old friend Kirkstaller. I liked what a clinicial psychologist once said on television. "If you talk to God, it's called prayer. If he talks back, it's called schizophrenia"

I've done a little research into the phenomina experienced by kirkstaller in which he was visited by a deity whilst cleaning out the rabbit cage in hsi garden - I don't think it was Jesus at all but in fact was El-ahrairah, the spiritual rabbit guide from Watership Down come to tell him to release his bretheren from the cage and stop mis-treating rabbits in future.

In fact there is documented evidence of this in one of El-ahrairah scriptures in which he writes, "What a fekkin day I've had, went to warn off a human from some captive bunnies and the daft barstard worships ME now, this isn't how its supposed to happen..."

If he'd looked closer then kirkstaller would probably have noticed the buck teeth and big ears on his "Jesus"...

In a society where we are told to respect other people's beliefs, cultures etc. it really doesn't apply to the Sin Bin does it.

If someone wants to worship a kitten for example, then so be it.