London Terrorist Attacks - 7th July 2005

[johnnyboy]

Thanks, MarkN.

The whole thing that confuses me about people's desire to brand themselves with ID cards, etc, is somehow it will make us all safer. It will not make us any safer.

It's just another tool of control over us.

Get this, folks, in a supposedly free society like the one we're living in, bad things happen. Bad things are said. People are hurt, maimed and killed. When you introduce freedom into a country, people are more free to do bad things as well as good things.

Carrying around a branding mark will not increase freedom and will not decrease the bad things that men do.

[Gavin Scott]

I would throw my full support behind what you have just said jb.

There is a really bogus argument about ID cards, namely; if you are not doing anything wrong you have nothing to be worried about. It's utter rubbish.

Why should citizens have to carry a card (ultimately under penalty of fines or imprisonment) just to walk the streets?

How would having a card stop terrorists from leaving bombs on the underground system? The evidence of Spain's attacks proves that it wouldn't prevent anything.

The advent of RFID tagging means that every tin of beans in a supermarket can be followed from shelf to trolley to car park (and beyond?). If the same technology is put into ID cards, then what is to stop the police "scanning" passers by in the street to see who is carrying their cards? What benefit to society will this bring?

When attacks like yesterday happen, people - in a misguided hope that they can stop a these events happening again - will say "yes, make us all carry cards".

Don't be a sheep. Don't ask for your liberties to be taken away. Fight for them.

[Nick Harvey]

On a slightly more lighthearted note, has anyone else realised that the terrorists kindly bombed London on July the seventh, so we can have no arguments over whether it's 11/9 or 9/11.

On this occasion, it's 7/7 whichever way round you like these things.

Very nice of them, I thought.

[A.J.A.]

I find the apparent attitude of some hotliers astounding. From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4662809.stm:

Hundreds of commuters spent Thursday night stranded in London and some have accused hoteliers of cashing in on the bomb attacks.
Prices at a number of London's hotels increased by more than double on Thursday night, the BBC has learned.

Lastminute.com said price rises for hotels featured on its site had been set by hotels themselves.

However, some hotels offered blankets and use of showers for free and other businesses donated goods to casualties.

The attacks on the Tube network and a double-decker bus killed at least 50 people and injured more than 700.

A Trading Standards Institute spokesman said hotel profiteering after a bombing attack was reprehensible.

With the transport networks down and no way of returning home, one businessman from Manchester told the BBC he had paid £250 for an £80 room.

Commuters said they were appalled, and thousands chose to walk for hours to reach home rather than stay the night in a hotel.

A spokesman for the British Hospitality Association, which represents hotels, said he was surprised by the increases.

Grant Hearn, the CEO of hotel chain Travelodge, said the price rises were a "disgrace".

"Travelodge is outraged to hear reports of hoteliers taking advantage of the situation to increase rates and deplores the idea that anyone should have had the insensitivity to take advantage of the tragic circumstances," he said.

"That type of behaviour has gone, and was never acceptable in the first place. It makes us all look bad.

"It's outrageous, and I believe the companies doing this should be named and shamed."

The BBC News website received e-mails from readers who said higher than usual prices were charged by some hotels which belonged to the Thistle Group.

A Thistle Group spokeswoman said: "Thistle Group did not raise their prices as a response to yesterday's tragedy, Thistle maintained their usual strategy offering the best rate available based on the fact all London hotels had been fully booked."

She said customers who had booked rooms but cancelled or did not show up on Thursday were not charged.

London's hotels were 80% full before the blasts, and on Wednesday the UK tourist industry was celebrating the news of London's successful bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games.

But some US tourists have cancelled bookings for the coming week.

The Hilton Metropole, located near the Edgware Road bomb blast, was used as an emergency treatment centre for casualties.

The Marks & Spencer department store on Edgware Road also allowed rescue staff to use it as a treatment unit, gave food and water to rescue teams and casualties, and also provided blankets and clothing.

A spokeswoman said: ""They just did whatever they had to do. The priority was making sure the casualties were OK. That meant giving them blankets and clothing from the shop floor.

"It's what anybody would do in that situation. We are part of the community."

[Spencer For Hire]

Let's face it, the government's case for ID cards is sooo much stronger in the wake of today's attacks. If they had already been in use, the following would almost certainly have happened...

POLICEMAN: Ello ello ello, now then Sir, your skin has a distinct brown hue. Maybe I could see your ID card...
TERRORIST: Why of course Officer, here it is...
POLICEMAN (reading from card): 'Al Quaeda Terrorist' eh? It's down to the station with you Sonny Jim - you're nicked!
TERRORIST: Foiled again!

[..and we'd all be safe.

Despite the tounge-in-cheekedness, I agree. I see no compelling reason to disagree with national identity cards. Never mind the fact that over half of the country allready effectively carry a national ID card in the form of a photocard driving licence, what bad can possibly come of their introduction?

The only thing I disagree with is the posibility of us being required to pay for our compulsory ID card - if the government want us to have them, then the government can fund them. Beyond that, compulsory ID cards are a damned good idea and if they will help prevent incidents like this occuring then they can't come fast enough for me.

Let's bring the 'ID cards would breach our human rights' brigade up to speed here - as today has demonstrated, we live in dangerous times. And a simple measure like being required to carry a compulsory national ID (which let's face it, is hardly a big deal) could make our country that much safer. If there's one lesson I hope that is learnt from today it's that all the eggheads need to get their heads our of the sand and realise that proposing to introduce ID cards is one of the best ideas the present government has ever come up with.

National ID? Prison for those who don't carry it? Bring it on!!!

Looks like my attempt at irony backfired there. I was actually trying to suggest that ID cards would have done sod all to stop yesterday's attacks. Whilst it might mean the police decide to stop anyone who looks slightly ethnic/suntanned/or just smelling of curry, an ID card does not tell you if someone's planning on blowing up a bus.

That'll teach me to try and be clever.

[Jenny]

With biometric details being needed for Passports,

Not so - even the Americans only want a digitised version of your passport photo on a chip. Not even a special biometric scan, just a jpeg (or something like that) copy of your ordinary photo-booth piccy.

[rts]

On a slightly more lighthearted note, has anyone else realised that the terrorists kindly bombed London on July the seventh, so we can have no arguments over whether it's 11/9 or 9/11.

On this occasion, it's 7/7 whichever way round you like these things.

Very nice of them, I thought.

And my Mum, who reads faaaaar to much into numbers, went a step further and said if you had the digits of the year together (2005), you get 7 also. Dun dun dah!!

[Luke-H]

On a slightly more lighthearted note, has anyone else realised that the terrorists kindly bombed London on July the seventh, so we can have no arguments over whether it's 11/9 or 9/11.

On this occasion, it's 7/7 whichever way round you like these things.

Very nice of them, I thought.

And my Mum, who reads faaaaar to much into numbers, went a step further and said if you had the digits of the year together (2005), you get 7 also. Dun dun dah!!

And, if I remember correctly, there were seven explosions.

7/7 7

777

The number of perfection.

I don't think that was consequence. Anyway, I'm shitting bricks now, if there is another attack, I live about a minute away from a place now placed on high alert. Drax Power Station - the biggest in Europe...

Let's hope nothing happens there...

[rts]

Only four explosions. The bombs exploded between stations, so what was thought to be a blast at King's Cross and Russel Square turned out to be one bomb, on one train, between the two stations.

[Luke-H]

Only four explosions. The bombs exploded between stations, so what was thought to be a blast at King's Cross and Russel Square turned out to be one bomb, on one train, between the two stations.

Ok then.

7/7 + 2005

2+0+0+5=7

Still makes 777.

Still makes the supposed number of perfection.

Religion's all a load of bollocks anyway, people need to realise that.

[johnnyboy]

What's amusing/disturbing is the war-pimping press in the UK and US.

Fox News et al have described yesterday as the biggest terror attack on London since The Battle Of Britain.

How fucking brazen and shameless. Londoners and the inhabitants of many other cities in the UK came under nightly aerial bombardment from a militarily powerful nation.

Al-Qeada, if it even exists (and am I the only one who thinks that the name of the group "responsible" for yesterday's outrages is a bit fishy?), is no Luftwaffe.

What a comparison to draw - what a bogus attempt to equate the current "enemy de jour" with the combined might of a nation and its miltary. What an insult to the memories of our brave men and women who died in World War II.

Attack on Iran by September anyone?

It's important that we Brits get some reality on this alleged threat - especially so the dunderheaded Yanks currently trying to bring "democracy" to the world (except for, of course, Uzbekistan, a particularly vicious regime Bush and his chickenhawks support because they've got a military base there).

> Al Qeada did not exist until a court case in New York in 2001 under RICO. No-one had ever heard of it until then - it did not exist.

>There were no terrorist training camps in Afghanistan - Bin Laden is and was a minor radical occasionally allowed to train potential "terrorists" by the Taliban. Bin Laden represented a form of radical Islam which was thoroughly and decisively crushed by Arab countries in the early 90s - he has no power, and hasn't had for years.

> Fox News and the other war pimps constantly change what Al Qeada is to suit whatever promotes their agenda. There are not 60,000 terrorists in sleeper cells around the world with a huge pool of finance to further their aims - if there really was, why the fuck are we and everyone else not being bombed every day?

> What we in the West face today is not, as Tony Blair called it, an "existential threat to our way of life". There are a few disgruntled malcontents who may or may not get the opportunity to do something. The IRA and the Loyalist paramilitaries were far more of a "threat".

> 50 people were murdered in London yesterday. Since the start of the war, more than 100 people have been murdered or died in Iraq every day.

Don't buy this hype, people. Mourn the dead, catch the perpetrators, but keep a perspective on reality. Don't let Tony lie us into war again and take away our liberties.

[/rant over]