Tag Archives: London

7/7 attacks, four years on

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If you haven’t, read the liveblog from the day, have a look at the one year on post, much of which still stands (though, thankfully, this country seems to be rather less hysterical about terrorism these days), and flick through the London Terror Attacks archive.

It’s important not to forget those that died. But although a memorial is being unveiled later today, the thing about terrorism remains that it exists to terrorise.

Four years on, the level of fear in London is back to what it was on 6th July 2005. People carry on their lives quite happily. The underground is packed with people not even giving a thought to the possibility of being blown up on the way to work. The majority of commuters this morning will not even remember that today is the anniversary of those deeply unpleasant events.

This is the best memorial.

Despite the best efforts of the terrorists – and the tabloid-whipped politicians scrabbling around in their wake with plans for detention without trial, stifling protest, DNA databases and countless other pointless draconian measures – our way of life has not been changed.

We, the people of London, were attacked – not the politicians, and not the innumerable armchair warmongers from around the world. The politicians and sabre-rattlers could do well to learn from our response – we dusted ourselves down, had a quick look around, and carried on with our lives.

The terrorists, hoping to have a major impact on the lives of everyone in this country, managed merely to kill and maim a few score innocents. They hoped to become heroes – they ended up little better than animals. And, four years on, they have been all but forgotten.

This is how it should be. If terrorists attack us to scare us and make us change our way of life, what better response is there than to carry on as if nothing has happened?

Mayor Boris, eh?

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Gordon Brown, 2000: “Some people might think Ken Livingstone is funny, but saddling London with him for four years is no laughing matter”

Boris JohnsonThe same has repeatedly been said about the man Johnson over the last four weeks along with a number of wild allegations based largely on out of context quotation – much the same as the whole “Ken’s an anti-Semite” nonsense.

More worrying have been the unsupported assertions based on little more than the outdated 1980s belief that all Tories are evil – my parents are Tories, and I can assure you that they are not. More to the point, people were voting in the mayoral elections who weren’t even born when Thatcher was in power. Using her as the all-conquering bogeyman simply isn’t a viable electoral strategy any more. (It’s a bit pathetic it ever was, if you think about it – after all, it was the Tories, not Labour, who got rid of her…)

Ken did a halfway decent job over the last eight years , along with a bunch of very impressive achievements. I have little reason to believe that Boris can’t do similarly – and no reason to think he’ll be a disaster. His acceptance speech certainly started on the right bipartisan (even tripartisan) note, and he’s blatantly not a typical Tory no matter the colour of his rosette, educational history and accent. I’m hopeful.

Furthermore, anyone who thinks that Boris and Boris alone will be calling the shots in London simply doesn’t get how politics works. Or how the Mayor’s office works, for that matter – it simply doesn’t have as much power as everyone seems to think. Ken was just very good at giving the impression that all the successes were thanks to him and him alone.

All this hyperbole being spewed about Johnson from normally sensible left-wing sources* – not to mention the dismissal of over a million Londoners who picked him as their first choice as merely “doing it for a laugh” – is doing the British left no good at all.

Boris Johnson is not some monster – by painting him as such when he blatantly is not is going to rub off badly on you, not him. Just as it rubbed off on Labour badly when they tried the same trick with Ken back in 2000. (That certainly helped push me towards voting for the guy…)

If the left/Labour can’t get over the snide remarks, personal attacks and class prejudice that seems to imbue every aspect of their relationship with the Conservative Party – and, ideally, come up with some practical left-wing policies rather than populist and ill-considered appeals to the middle-classes and big business – they are going to continue to slide in the polls to the point of embarrassing defeat.

And serve them right. (Labour promising cuts to corporation tax while the Tories run to the defence of impoverished single mothers? Come on, guys…). The worry is the knock-on effect – not just driving people who care to the extremes of right and left, but meaning that the Tories don’t have to fight for power.

Boris had to fight, and fight hard – because Ken was a formidable and principled oponent. He’s not going to forget that in a hurry; he’s going to be fully aware that a sizable chunk of the capital don’t like him and that a sizable chunk of the country want him to fail. And it’s going to make him work even harder.

But the way the rest of the Labour party is going, the next election is going to be handed to the Tories on a plate. They won’t even need to bother knocking on doors at this rate. And power gained that easily is never going to engender respect – either from politicians or public. Labour have had a free run for most of the last decade or more, and just look what happened to them…

* I won’t link to any specifics as I hope they’ll see how silly they’re being soon, but have a gander at some of the tripe the Guardian’s been spewing over the last few days for an idea of the tone and content

London elections – my vote, for those interested

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Due to hating the party system, today I shall take great pleasure in not voting based on the colour of the rosettes – not least because the Lib Dems have inexplicably adopted UKIP’s colour scheme of yellow and purple, making things both aesthetically repulsive and slightly confusing – but on individual candidates’ policies, personalities and potential.

This entertainingly means that I will end up voting for the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems all on the same day.

Huzzah for elections where I get four votes! (Boo, however, for party list systems, which means my fourth vote is going to be very difficult to allocate – hence not having voted yet… I may even say sod it and go for the Greens, just so I can vote for four parties at once…)

In other news: Congrats to the BBC’s Alan Little, who won last night’s UACES-Reuters Reporting Europe Award, like wot I was up for. I ended up with a shiny award anyway, though, with a Jury’s Commendation, which was nice. I can also report that Reuters lay on very drinkable wine, and that Mark Mardell makes for good company at the dinner table. Ta to all involved, etc.

Edit: Oh, and sorry for the lack of posts recently. Still very busy – but there’s still a rather fun discussion going on in the comments to that democratic deficit post, though. One to which I will return soon. I hope.