Topic: explosion in London

[aquilegia]

Robert - just found this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1525753,00.html

Makes you wonder if people are leaving things lying around on purpose to cause chaos or if they are just idiots.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Could be either but it was probably carelessness combined with police over-reaction. They evacuated about 30 000 people, and when you have that number, somebody's bound to forget something.

[SpeedyMango]

Plottie - sorry to hear your OH's friend has lost someone. How horrible not to know for all this time.

My friend's blog was picked up by the BBC. It's now at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4670099.stm, and makes for a harrowing read (reads from the bottom up).

[Justy]

Your friend is very brave Speedy - it is difficult to read but hopefully it will have helped her by getting ther thoughts out on 'paper'.  I hope she continues to find strength in friends and family.

[aquilegia]

Agree with Justy about that SPeedy Mango. But I just can't read anymore about it.

Had a bit of a scare getting off the train this morning - someone threw a little carrier bag of rubbish off the train just as the doors were closing. I legged it away from there. Fortunately it didn't explode.

Now I get irate enough about people dumping their rubbish, but after an event like last Thursday, you'd think people would be a little more conscious about their rubbish. But no. How naive of me.

I just hate this state of paranoia it's put me in. Every time someone gets off the train, I have to check in case they have left anything behind. I keep noticing all sorts of places where it would be so easy for a terrorist to leave a bomb. I think it is driving me slightly insane.

ANd part of me also believes it was a big plot that the government (or maybe the US government) were in on to distract us from what they were doing (or not doing) at G8. Well, afterall, they knew about September 11th...

(Oh dear - I've started to sound like a big paranoid conspiracy freak. Better shut up before they send for the men in white coats! ;))

[busy_lizzie]

Read the blog all the way through and felt incredibly moved and upset by the graphic details of it.  I can only imagine the trauma of having gone through something like that and the courage it must have taken to have got back onto a tube train.  My heart goes out to those families who have loved ones dead and missing, and to the survivors who still have those horrific images inside their heads. What a wicked waste. May the perpetrators be damned for their evil actions. busy_lizzie

[aquilegia]

Just plucked up the courage to read the blog and now having to fight back tears. Really puts things into perspective and makes me feel quite ashamed to feel fear on the tube. It was also really uplifting and beautiful. All I can think is it's probably a good job they were plunged into darkness. I cannot even bear to think about what they might have seen otherwise. Much love and respect to your friend Speedy.

[Doris_Pinks]

Very moving Speedy, thank you for posting that.

[Yellow Petals]

You can't keep a good nation down.

---------
Coping with emergencies the British way: The nearest branch of Pret has sold out of chocolate cake.
---------
These terrorists are rubbish.

They'll be caught next week, having successfully demonstrated that the British react to terrorism with indifference. We grew up with it, you see. What with this being a civilised country, they will not receive the death penalty, but be locked up for the rest of their lives, to be regularly sodomised by other inmates while they slowly realise that their interpretation of their religion is a pile of old hokum. Whoops. Meanwhile, I'll be out in London, partying.
---------
On days like this, the music radio stations play sad music - if they play any music at all. I turned on the radio in the bathroom when I was taking my shower just now, and they were playing "One" by U2.
HAVEN'T WE SUFFERED ENOUGH?
---------
All these explosions are rather scary.
Don't suppose the French are that sore at losing the Olympics, are they?
-------
BBC Parliament internal email:
NEWSFLASH:
There has been a widespread outbreak of grumbling and tutting today in London, along with a large number of people going home instead of to work, with a certain amount of guilty pleasure. Sorry, bad guys. We've been bombed before, and we just adjust our day to account for it. This is London calling.
-------
It was just announced that the queen is deeply shocked and that it has been decided that the Congestion charge (a toll to use a car in London) will not be in place today - how I love the British.
-------
"I'd like to congratulate today's terrorists for achieving nothing but instilling a fierce patriotism back into the British Isles, creating a rather wide-spread rash of Blitz Spirit, and giving me a day off work.
I'm a bit pissed off that you nearly blew up some of my friends, but at the end of the day - you failed. We're still here, we're not scared of you."
-------
From the BBC website: statement from Al Qaeda:
"Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters".
Erm really... where? I think you will find that's a reaction to the winning the Olympics bid or perhaps just the effect Bush has on us when he visits?!
---------
When the news reporter said "Shopkeepers are opening their doors bringing out blankets and cups of tea" I just smiled. It's like yes. That's Britain for you. Tea solves everything.
You're a bit cold?
Tea.
Your boyfriend has just left you?
Tea.
You've just been told you've got cancer?
Tea.
Coordinated terrorist attack on the transport network bringing the city to a grinding halt?
TEA DAMMIT!
And if it's really serious, they may bring out the coffee. The Americans have their alert raised to red, we break out the coffee. That's for situations more serious than this of course. Like another England penalty shoot-out [in soccer].
----------
"It's hard to panic the British. They've dealt with the Blitz, the IRA, the Silurians, the Zarbi, the Daleks, the Cybermen..."
----------
"Terrorists -- Dude, London?! WTF were you thinking?! XRef: Blitz, IRA, Ru Paul."
----------
To quote an old Londoner who lived through the blitz and got caught up in the Canary Wharf explosion: "I've been blown up by a better class of bastard than this!"
----------
"We took on the Romans, the Saxons, the Danes, the French, William Wallace, the Black Plague, the Roundheads, the Great Fire, Napoleon, the Nazis, and the Blitz, and we're still here. You terrorists are bloody amateurs."
----------
"They're asking everyone to stay within the office."
"Oh. What about lunch?"
"Er..."
"We can go out for lunch, right?"
"No!"
"Well are you ordering pizza or something?"
----------
They did their worst, and they managed to disrupt our transport network and get fatalities in the low double figures. That happens on a fairly regular basis anyway, you twits. What's your next trick - a fiendish weather control device which makes it rain on a bank holiday weekend?"
----------
People have been trying to blow up bits of London for decades. Centuries, in fact. This one's nothing special. It's no different to any of the others. London's reaction to it is typified by my friend Jeff, who was actually *running* to catch the bus that was blown up.
"I went to Euston: went to the tube and there was a loud bang. and we were sent out! Then we were sent out of the station so I half ran to Tavistock Place to catch a bus to Victoria. And then it went bang, so I thought "b****r that"."
----------
From Metaquotes:
"Al Qaeda say: 'Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters.' pregnant dog, please. Osama, you live in a f**k**g cave. You're like an evil Batman or something. No wonder you have a thing for blowing up commuters, because you will never commute because you live in a cave. You see transport, and you are filled with rage, because you? Live in a cave. You could try forming a political wing to... oh, wait, you can't because YOU LIVE IN A CAVE. thingy.

The BBC paused news coverage to show *Eastenders*. That'd be the nationwide fear, terror and panic, then."
---------
America says, "Let me get this straight. You've been trying for ten years to blow up an overinflated superpower run by the petty excuse for a mad cowboy... a country that takes three years to implement security systems meant to compensate for yesterday's incident... the country that invented irresponsible hysterical journalism... a country that has systematically managed to alienate everyone in the world... and you couldn't even do that... so you decided to take a crack at London? The place that has dealt with the IRA and the Blitz? The place that gets suspicious if it hasn't been bombed in a year? What were you thinking??? America is with you, London! Yeee-haw!"
---------
Israel says, "Let me get this straight. You've been trying for eighty years to blow up a country that's smaller than Switzerland. A country full of your own co-religionists, a country where every adult citizen under the age of 55 is a soldier on eleven months' leave, a country whose airline security puts James Bond to shame... and this challenge has somehow evaded you... so you decided to have a go at England? We've been dodging your shots since the 19-teens... they've been dodging your shots since the bloody Crusades! You think we've had practice putting our lives back together: meet the guys who've been doing it for a thousand years! You pathetic little morons! The Spanish Armada didn't faze the English, the Nazis didn't faze the English, and you think they're going to pay any attention to you? Ha! Israel is with you, England! Mamash sababa!"
---------

[Ozzy]

I echo everything that has been said here and will go one further//

TONY BLAIR is responsible for this, it is about time he should GO and GO now.. he knew the British people were against the war in Iraq... He knew that this day would come because of his meglamania.. I have no doubt as to to vile nature of those who carried out these attacks and my heart goes out to all those affected by this.. I am ashamed of our Prime Minister

this may not be popular with some of you here, but i dont care, I know how it feels to have a loved one taken away so brutally and will always voice my opinion.. shame on al-qeada and shame on tony blair...... I hold you both with utter contempt

enuff sed

ciaran

[Robert_Brenchley]

To me the real cowards are the politicians who hide behind their security while creating policies which ensure that other people get killed while they try to make capital out of it. Not that I have any sympathy for al-Quaida's perversion of Islam, don't get me wrong.

[Yellow Petals]

I completely agree, Robert.

[Justy]

hear hear Ozzy.  I at least have a clear concience that I tried to prevent him getting in again. 

I have been into the city today (Worcester) and the bins around the bus station are all taped up.  We are a sleepy little city but even I felt a prickle down my spine when I saw the bins.  It makes me feel no where is safe.

[Svea]

no one is, justy. a fact of life. i may be killed by a bus on the way home today. same difference to me :)
IMO, that is a little over the top (taping up bins) but there we are

[Robert_Brenchley]

It's not as over the top as evecuating 30 000 people from the centre of Birmngham because someone left a package on a bus.

[Mrs Ava]

During the late 80's and early 90's I worked in the West End of London and travelled daily by the Northern Line and Victoria line, and would hop on and off of buses and tubes during the week going here and there.  This was during the IRA palava so I could never throw any rubbish away whilst out because all bins were removed due to the threat of bombs being placed in them, and I would regularly have huge amounts of trouble getting into work or home from work due to a security scare, but I had to work, and it became a way of life.  Thankfully my dad was always home in time to come and rescue me from Stockwell or Victoria or tooting or wherever!

[derbex]

SSSSHHH they've forgotten about the bins.