London, 12:29 BST
More information has emerged regarding the man known as James who has barricaded himself into a house in the Whitehall area of London today. It seems more and more likely that his motivation is religious and may be to do with the splinter cult of which he is a member. In a brief conversation with a negotiator, he told police: “I feel abandoned by my ministers in my time of greatest need.” James also apparently asserted that the whole world is out to get him. “They’re all watching,” he said, “I can tell. They’re all waiting for me to go. They want my blood.”
Some officers privately dismiss the religious connection, however, and say the case is drug-related.
“He spends a lot of time talking about Witchhazel and Squirrel Nutkin,” one senior policeman told reporters. “We suspect Witchhazel may be a reference to a new form of marijuana. The squirrel part is probably a hallucination.”
Cheryl Cummerbund, speaking for the Metropolitan Police, said that the force has decided to adopt a softly-softly approach.
“We’ve been criticised recently in several cases,” Ms Cummerbund said, “Most notably in the Stockwell matter, where we shot a plumber eight times in the head at close range on the assumption that we were allowed to because he was a Muslim. Tragically he turned out to be a Brazilian. It was ghastly.” Ms Cummerbund also acknowledged that police handling of the Man Shot For Smoking incident was also not ideal.
James, the man involved in today’s siege, has apparently been the victim of workplace bullying regarding his weight and lack of facial mobility, a result of being kicked in the head when he was a young man. Cartoons depicting him as gross and slobbering have been found in several houses near the site of the siege, and the picture which is emerging is of a man brought to a state of mental and emotional collapse by ceaseless hounding.
+++UPDATE+++
A few moments ago, James made an additional statement to police, in which he demanded that the public “pay for my damn pornography” and “build me a bloody duckhouse”. He then degenerated into further abuse of “Squirrel Nutkin” and regrets about his drug use.
More news as we have it.