3 years ago today London was bombed by terrorists.
Scumbags, you failed utterly.
We remember those who died, and applaud the stiff upper lip that England invented.
Cripes, I thought this was a breaking news thread…all I could think was “Oh fuck, not again…”.
I arrived in London that day, and I’ll always remember how people reacted. They just… endured, I think is the right word. Oh, the city is in complete chaos? We’ll handle it. Bombs going off? We’ll deal. No traffic in the centre? We’ll walk in a city of seven million people. We’ve had worse.
I had essentially the same experience. I think I got in the day before, but late, so the 7th was to be my first full day there. My wife was there on business, so I had the day to myself. I started walking to the British Museum from Aldwych. A few blocks from the hotel I saw a police car screaming down the street, which got my attention, because I hadn’t remembered a lot of that in prior trips. Then a couple more. Then I heard helicopters. It was clear that something was going down, so I watched the first news reports with a bunch of other people in an electronics shop. Once it became clear that things were not going to be normal, I went back to my hotel and spent the day watching the news. I was impressed by demeanor of the news presenters on TV (who were not overly sensationalist), and I was extra impressed with the government officials, particularly the London police. They were calm, cool, and collected, and never speculated or guessed at what was going on. If they didn’t know the answer to a question, they said so. It was a refreshingly adult way of communicating with the public.
The next day I did make it to the British Museum. On my way out, they closed the doors and asked us to stay inside for a little while. Again, I was incredibly impressed with how calm and matter-of-fact everyone was. After a while we got the all-clear, and went about our business. It turns out that a couple of young ladies visiting from China didn’t want to drag their rolling suitcase through the museum so they had chained it to the fence outside the museum. :eek: Even accounting for possible language challenges, that’s just plain stupid.
I was in a canoe in the middle of a lake in Sweden. I got a text message from a colleague along the lines of:
When the going gets tough, go to the pub. For a year or more we referred to The Cardinal as The Winchester.
I got virtually the same thing from my brother’s PDA-email thingy, only he didn’t know there were bombs everywhere. He had just left King’s Cross on the next train along on the same line.
This is the same man who called in sick on the day of the Docklands/Canary Wharf bombing in 1996. His office windows were shattered and he would at the very least have been sliced open by glass :eek:
Anyway. Carry on, London.
I was moved by how the newspapers reacted as well. They were like the people, only more so. One columnist wrote something along the lines of “You tried your worst and you managed to hold up public transit for a day and get a death toll in the double figures. That happens all the time anyway”. Another listed all the bad things British people have lived through (vikings, invasions, the Black Plague, the Great Fire, the Blitz…) and finished with “you guys are amateurs”.
All very cool, and just the right way to deal.
…British food, the weather, Puritans, Jeremy Beadle…
…the Spice Girls, Madonna, Manchester, the almost-apocalypse…
(holds hand over heart for Britain)
Hang tough London, we’re there with you.
Obligatory link: http://www.werenotafraid.com/
Except that we’ve allowed our government to introduce 42 days detention without trial, we’re allowing councils to use anti-terror legislation to crack down on begging, we have journalists being banned from filming street scenes… all to “fight terror”.
The same stocisim that prevented us from getting too worked up about 7/7 is now letting us sleep-walk into giving up more and more of our freedoms.
The stiff upper lip cuts both ways, alas.
That’s all you can do really unless you’re on the spot when it happens and you’re hurt or helping. You’ve time to be a bit more shocked later when the papers or television shows you the scene.
What?!? :mad:
It was originally supposed to be 90 days, but the Govt backtracked it to 42 days.
It’s not been enacted formally into law yet, but the initial legislation was passed by the House of Commons and is now going through the ratification process.
What’s worse is that 69% of Britons support the legislation. 
Are they going to send the detainees to Gibraltar or something?
Seems to have worked over here…
I saw one Londoner interviewed who said, “I lived through the Blitz. We’ve been bombed by a better class of bastard than you before.”
Can I ask what Manchester has done to offend you? I know a few dodgy geezers in this city, and they might be able to sort out your problem for you…
"But demons like Ligur and Hastur wouldn’t understand. They’d have never thought up Welsh-language television, for example. Or value-added tax. Or Manchester.
He’d been particularly pleased with Manchester."
–Messr. Anthony J. Crowley, Good Omens