What A Week!

London has seen a week of mixed emotions this week. We started the week with the fantastic news that London had beaten everyone to be the Olympic destination in the year 2012. Celebrations of course followed and everyone was really excited.

The very next day we are attacked by terrorist scum, placing bombs in our transit system, at peak hours for maximum innocent death & injury. People have, of course, drawn links to G8 and the Olympic win, but I think it unlikely that they are related, as I can' t see them cancelling the bombing if we had not won the Olympic bid and the G8 is in Edinburgh.

Of course, a group linked to Al Qaeda have claimed responsibility. At last count they managed to kill over 50 people, although this is expected to rise as we sift through the underground mess, and injured over 700. These are pretty big number, but when held in comparison to 9/11 and taken in context of the number of people (3m) who use the tube on a daily basis, I think we escaped pretty lightly, the death and injury toll could have been much worse.

Londoners are displaying that typical British stiff upper lip ethic and are returning to work in decent numbers this morning, using those very same transportation methods they always have done. My generation has grown up with bombings in London with the IRA, and I suspect are less intimidated generally by this sort of activity. I listened to one guy being interviewed last night, who had actually been on one of the trains, and he was telling how pretty much everyone had remained calm on the train and simply went about the task of getting out without panicking.

Lastly I would like to take a moment to thank all of my American friends & colleagues who took time out of their day to ask after my UK friends & relatives, to express their shock and show their compassion at our situation. Let's make sure that we continue to fight these people and do everything that we can to ensure ordinary decent Muslims are not tarred with the same brush as these mindless fanatics.

Roll on 2012!