London Bombs: Looking For Heroes And Not Giving In
“LONDON’S worst ever bomb carnage was foiled yesterday — thanks to a drunken reveller, a hero cop and a car clamper.”
So says the Sun in “SAVED”. And before it talks of the plot to kill “hundreds of girls” (it was ladies night at Tiger Tiger Club) and “thousands of people” (Express) it asks: “Were you the man treated by paramedics or do you know him? Do you know the paramedics who responded to a call at Tiger, Tiger? Or do you know the quick thinking bobby who grabbed the mobile phone from the car?”
And what of the clampers who removed a second vehicle primed to explode from a West End street and hauled it to a car pound near Hyde Park, an hour after a traffic warden had ticketed it?
The Sun needs a hero. And thanks to London’s draconian parking laws and alcoholism it might get some.
But will the biggest hero of all be the drunk, for whom paramedics were called? The paramedics who spotted petrol vapour inside the silvery green Merc and contacted the police? The policeman who removed from the first car a mobile phone trigger attached to a detonator?
Of course, we will get to know all of their names, providing, of course, the drunk can remember who his is. We will honour the emergency services and the tabloids will hand the heroes a gold-coloured metal heart on a string.
But they didn’t do it for recognition. The paramedics and policemen did it because they were able. Celebrity is not everyone’s ambition.
Heroes & Villains
Of course, it is simpler to focus on the heroes than the villains, the “FANATICS [who] tried to bring Baghdad-style carnage to London yesterday with two car bombs primed to kill hundreds” (Mirror).
They are harder to find. Or are they? The Mirror says: “Disturbingly, Scotland Yard and MI5 have admitted they had no intelligence warning of potential car bomb attack in the UK.”
But it concedes that the security services “had been braced for some sort of terror strike to coincide with Gordon Brown’s takeover as PM”.
And then the biggest clue of all: “And the bomb attacks were celebrated on a fundamentalist Islamic website hours BEFORE the cars were found.” And the Sun says police have “crystal clear” CCTV images of the driver of the first Mercedes.
So CCTVs are good. Drinking is good. Profiteering from motorists is good. Islamic fundamentalists hellbent on killing and maiming are bad and not as bright as we fear them to be.
“DON’T LET BOMBERS BEAT US,” says the Express’s front-page headline. But how will they beat us? By what stick will victory be measured? Will they win when they’ve killed us all? Or when we give way to self preservation and allow fundamentalists to recreate al-Andalus, the Islamic kingdom in Spain of 500 years past? Or when we give burkas for all, deliver a free Iraq (in which the locals are free to kill each other without American involvement) and give deluded men respect?
Scotland Yard’s anti-terror chief Peter Clarke says “Life must go on”. And Tory MP Patrick Mercer, a security expert and former soldier, says: “Above all we must not let the bombers beat us. Our lives must be conducted as normally as possible. Anything else would be a victory for our enemies.”
Did you hear that? Don’t resign your job, sell up your London home at well below market value and flee to Greenland. Stay where you are. Don’t let the terrorists scare you.
And don’t let the tales of how they are going to do for us all and the tabloid frenzy scare you either…
Posted: 30th, June 2007 | In: Tabloids Comments (42) | TrackBack | Permalink
