Friday, July 08, 2005

London this week

Was it only the day before yesterday that the people of London and the rest of the U.K. were celebrating at winning the bid to host the Olympics in 2012? Who could have believed that within 24 hours of that announcement we would be hearing another, that the city of London had been brought to its knees by bombings on the underground and on a double decker bus.

As I write this, there has been no official claimant to this devastation, although Al-Qaeda are strongly suspected. This morning, there is talk of it being down to a small cell of young men in their twenties who went missing from The Midlands yesterday.

Of course London has had its fair share of bombings in the past from The Blitz to the IRA. The British are a resilient lot employing 'the bulldog spirit' when necessary.

London is a great city, I love it, from my very first visit there as a child aged 11 to a still awestruck 40 something of today. I just hope that when I visit again it won't put me off taking the tube or hopping on a red double decker bus. I doubt it will. As one commuter put it on TV this morning when asked how he felt about travelling in London today, "Surely, this is the safest day of all to travel across the city!" He's probably right.

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