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Grin with cat attached
| Reassured yet? | Jul. 7th, 2006 09:23 am | |
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Ah yes, lots of day-glo coppers standing around tube stations chatting among themselves. I can only see it as a complete bloody waste of resources. Still, keeps them from arresting people for offending inanimate objects. mood:
 cynical | ||
| Norlins, and waking up | Sep. 2nd, 2005 08:10 am | |
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So: - New Orleans is considered a "sinful city" by much of the American Right. - Bush has apparently been cutting back funds for flood defences for years. - There are complaints about the slow rate at which aid is being delivered. - Bush responds by "reassuring" the public that aid is being delivered as quickly as it can be passed though "faith based and community organisations" (sic) (translation left as an exercise for the cynical). And the lead article on the news that I woke up to, before that one: The 'ringleader' of the 7/7 attacks promises futher violence against britons "because we support our government's attacks on 'his people'". I'm not sure who's more delusional here, but it's not got the day off to a particularly encouraging start. | ||
| Point of accuracy... | Jul. 8th, 2005 10:34 am | |
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London has been brought to its FEET, not its KNEES. Someone slap the next journalist who repeats that bloody cliché. | ||
| Fear and Terror | Jul. 8th, 2005 08:43 am | |
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Terror requires either overwhelming force, or rumour, confusion, and a lack of information. Where there is an adequate flow of information, and honesty and transparency from civil authorities, terror will be replaced by a combination of resilience and information. And it is now almost impossible to stop information flow - the trick is to keep it factual, unpanicked and free from rumour. The spanish government fell, I feel, not because of a wish to placate the terrorists, but because they lied. It's been quoted that "the bombers will always get through". That's still true, although that's not its original meaning. But bombing, of civilians in particular, has always been chronically ineffective as a weapon of policy. Much has been made of the 'Blitz Spirit' recently, but the same attitude was held in Berlin: "Unsere Mauern brechen, unsere Herzen nicht". CBRN weapons up the stakes somewhat, but even they can be of only limited effect. I wouldn't advocate complacency - we all need to be observant - but we need to be equally wary of over-reaction - by governments as well as the populace. "War on Terror" is precisely the wrong way to do things - the best defence against terrorism is fair and equitable treatment of all people and of all nations. ETA: interesting variation on Sky News, referring to the "War of Terror" | ||
| *grrr* | Jul. 7th, 2005 06:37 pm | |
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Comparatively balanced and rational news on BBC News 24 all day, then they go over to the Six O'Clock News (the mass-consumption broadcast shown on BBC1 etc) and there's throw-away comments about "the emergency services, stretched beyond their limits". Oh, and now "Islamist Terrorists". *SMACK* | ||
| Thoughts on the day | Jul. 7th, 2005 04:18 pm | |
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1) Well done, and heartfelt thanks, to the emergency services and TFL for their actions today - including those who created the London Emergency Plan and those who carried it out. 2) The next person to tell me that politics has no effect on their life is going to get very short shrift. 3) The "War on Terror" is not the solution to this. It's one of the primary causes. And watch out for Bush using this as an excuse to "Crack down on Terror" or weasel out of debt-relief or environmental agreements at G8. 4) Watch out also for more pro- ID card hype shortly, from a government that sees both a chance to get what it wants, and to "look like they're doing something". 5) The tube is going to be hell for a while. The upper half of the Circle line will be out tomorrow, and probably a number of other stations and sections. There will be a *lot* of false alarms in the following seeks. However, better false alarms than real ones. 6) It's 60 years since the Blitz, and a fair few years since any IRA bombs on the UK mainland, yet Londoners seem almost disturbingly pragmatic. Is there something in the water here? | ||
| Jul. 7th, 2005 03:47 pm | ||
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| Full points to Brian Paddick for chewing out a reporter using the phrase "Islamic Terrorism". | ||
| TFL travel info | Jul. 7th, 2005 02:17 pm | |
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| http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/ is now up providing a single page giving current travel status. | ||
| News cache improved | Jul. 7th, 2005 11:22 am | |
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| http://www.phase.org/pages/uknews - 9 cached feeds, now with descriptions, that should hold even if the media sites they're feeding from become intermittent. | ||
| Since BBC News appears to have fallen over, here's the latest tube story. | Jul. 7th, 2005 10:11 am | |
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Copied from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lond (which I had open before the site failed) ( Read more... ) I've gathered a few more cached news feeds that may cover this at: http://www.ch3.org.uk/pages/uknews This page should hold up even if the parent sites fail. | ||
| "Emergency capacity" | Jul. 7th, 2005 09:53 am | |
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Can't anyone run a website to cope with 'unusual loads'? BBC News went down yesterday due to the Olympic result, TFL's site is now down because "something" has happened. UPD: Given the scope of the "incident", I rescind these complaints. PS: K's fine (but had to finish her journey on foot), I'm working at home today anyway. | ||