Mails from Dan@10h22: Apparently it's just a power surge, but the media is certainly trying to whip up a frenzy about it.
@10h32: Fuck: OK it's NOT a power surge. Three buses have been blown up as well, apparently. City in chaos. Start running through the streets.
How dare they. This is my fucking city.
It's all quite strange. On the one hand you just want to tell everyone to go home. What's the point of trying to work on a day like this? On the other hand it all feels really detached. I'm in West London, which is (fortunately) not near in of the hit areas. It feels like when you get told that someone you know in a different city has cancer. You're shocked but left feeling helpless or out of touch.
I kind of feel wrong that I'm so safe in West London, while all this chaos goes on the other side of town. Makes no sense I know.I just feel some weird emotion that I should have been climbing out of tube or something. Granted I have no feelings of missing out on being blown into small bits. I just feel strange that I'm so safe while the world comes apart a stones throw away.
I've managed to get hold of most people I know and they all are ok, as are most of the London bloggers I know. Which is good. Many thanks to everyone who texted to check that I wasn't still in one Sevitz bit.
I think now that the bombs are over, we are actually very safe. I don't expect another wave of attacks. I don't feel any fear. I'm not worried. Although I am a bit unsettled. Seriously don't fuck with my city.
Seen quite a few people on the news say this is because we won the Olympics. Which is absurd. If Russia won where they going to hop on a plane and blow up Moscow. No, these things take months to plan and execute if not longer. This clearly has to do with the G8 Summit. Special thanks go to all those protesters who helped insure the countries entire police force was away. Thanks guys. Bet you feel real special smashing up cars now.
1. Lori
I feel bad for not checking you were OK, but it’s because I’ve been slack with my blog reading and thought you were still out of the country. Sorry. Glad you are still all the Sevitz you always were. Can’t believe how many people have died though… this is really scary stuff.
2. Dani
Long time lurker, occaisional commenter. Very glad to hear you and London bloggers are ok.
3. Green Fairy
Many thanks to everyone who texted to check that I wasn’t still in one Sevitz bit.
They must have been really disappointed, eh? ;)
But really, not sure twenty times the amount of police used to monitor the G8 protesters could have prevented a single bomb being planted.
4. Adrian
GF, I don’t think anything could have prevented the bombs being planted. Perhaps better intelligence, but you can’t know everything. There also is an argument to be made that the attack was targeted during a time when they knew the police force in London would be weakened, which made the timing during the G8 summit opportune. It’s possible that if the silly amount of security in Scotland wasn’t needed then they may not have attacked. Unlikely but possible.
However, I don’t doubt that the emergency services where strained today, with the fact that many of the forces that would be available to help deal with the aftermath where simply unavailable. I think the forces on the ground today did an incredible job, but their will always be pinch points when their is a large contingent of the normal forces unavailable.
5. Nuge
I thought the emergency services were absolutely outstanding today. Organised, thorough and ruthlessly efficient.
Although there has been a number of fatalities, the majority of these were likely to be directly in the line of fire - without a chance to escape.
The police get a lot of stick in this country, but today they were incredible.
6. Beth
Glad to hear you all are ok. My thoughts and prayers are with you.
7. razorhead
Ahhh, you see that indignation in the face of tragedy? You’ve become a brit my son. The b/f remembers seeing people lift suspicious bags off underground trains and deposit them on the platform before calling security so people wouldn’t have their train held up during the IRA campaign.
8. graybo
I hope the media don’t try to whip up some sort of emotional fervour on the back of this. The one thing that Londoners showed once again today is that they (and by extension, the rest of the British) are a pretty resilient bunch, and it takes more than a few people with explosives to divert us from our way of life. The IRA never managed it. The entire German armed forces didn’t either. And nor will the people behind today’s outrage. And, much as I dislike him, I think that the PM got the tone and message about right in his comments - be strong, be resilient, carry on.
9. Rob
Glad to see you’re okay. Hope no one close to you was hurt.
10. badly dubbed boy
Alas, I don’t think it takes that much planning - just a bit of co-ordination to get three or four seperate teams of people with bombs in their rucksacks or whatever.
But G8 would have been the primary “motivator”, I agree, rather than the Olympics.
11. Adrian
No I disagree, I think getting the components to make a bomb that’s small enough to get into a rucksack is very difficult. These where professional bombs that where small and conceivable and capable of ripping the top off of a bus.
I don’t think recruiting people who are capable of blowing up innocents, in a city like London as easy as people perceive. In the 60 million people here many people here do you think really could do that? Not that many. How do you find them? it’s not easy.
I also thing this was carefully planned. If you look at where and how the bombs where detonated it was very deliberate.
No I think, this took a lot of planing. And the day was carefully chosen. All those police away at the summit. Day of the summit. I think this has been many many months in the planning.
When you want to break a city, you don’t do it haphazardly. And unfortunately they didn’t.
12. Princess of Darkness
Sevitz!
So I don’t watch the news or read the paper or even read news blogs - that’s my excuse.
But fuck I’m glad that when I did hear and ran here immediately to check, there was a new entry from you! More than glad you are still a Sevitz, and not many little Sevitzes.
Man.
13. Vendela (a.k.a. Wendy)
Fuck it all! My brother was at the World Trade Center on 9/11 and not a day goes by that I don’t think about what might have happened had he not survived. Today’s events in your hometown brought it all back to me. Wishing you and your’s all the very best. Goddamn those cowards!!!
14. Adrian
Thanks. The only way their are going to be many little Sevitz’s is an entirely different sort of fucking, and that’s in my city not with my city.
Princess, I don’t suppose you recognised the title from anywhere did you?
15. Princess of Darkness
…though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.
I recognised the Donne poem, but if there’s something else you’re alluding to, I’m afraid it’s too early for me to be up to speed yet :\ My first guess would be a Sandman reference, but after that I’m shit out of ideas.
p.s. Sister Esti is in London w/ kid & husband. Brother is in Glasgow. It’s my city too now.
16. Adrian
It was one of the set work poems for matric.
Maybe they changed it by the time you youngsters came along to a limerick or something easier that you could handle.
:-)
17. Princess of Darkness
Yup, we ‘youngsters’ still had it - part of the reason I recognised it DUR! ;D I won’t even argue with you over being called a youngster - I’ll take whatever I can get now.
Old Goose.
18. andrew
Do you think the numbers of officers at the G8 (around 10,000) really had an effect on the policing in London (30,000 officers in Met Police, over 1000 in the City of London Police, not sure about British Transport Police or the Royal Parks Constabulary) or the rest of the UK (over 130,000 police officers)?
19. Adrian
Considering we keep getting told that we need more police on the beat and the force is understaffed, a 5% - 10% shortage of staff (at G8) is fairly significant.
Do I think it would have necessarily stopped the bombs. No probably not. But if I was a bomber, a day when there are less cops around to see something a bit suspicious, a day when there are less cops around to question me and a day when there are less cops around to deal with the confusion is always going to be a better day a day when the cops are all around.
And if the protesters at G8 could learn the meaning of peaceful protest (a lesson those who attacked my city didn’t understand either), then perhaps we wouldn’t need so many cops up protecting the villages and towns around the G8 summit from vandals destroying their towns and villages.
20. Destructor
I think the fact that we consider it our city informs out rage. If, for example, our city was getting carpet-bombed by planes we couldn’t even see, with daisy-cutters that annihilate anything in a football-pitch-sized area, and our casualty rate in the War on Terror was running about about 100 times the casualty rate of our attackers, we’d probably feel a more intense form of rage which might impel us to strike back in some limited form.
21. Adrian
I’m not sure I quite follow what you are saying?
22. Destructor
That we care more about 50 deaths here than 5000 in the Gulf region. We’re outraged because it’s us.
23. Adrian
Whilst your point is valid, I’m not sure it’s relevant. This is always the case, regardless of the cause. When your neighbour gets shot you feel it more than when it’s gang violence the other side of town where people die everyday.
People can associate emotively with bombings in their city more easily than they can with a way or attacks elsewhere.
24. Destructor
Mmm. And if your neighbour gets shot, the next time you read about it, you might empathize with the other people across town because you know how they feel. I hope we do the same.