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.

Crazy Times!

On Saturday, I viewed what I think will go down as being the largest pop concert in the world, Live8, the brainchild of Sir Bob Geldof. Anyhow, it was fantastic to watch on the tele. From 1:00 pm I watched it practically all the way through until 12:00 midnight. The concert opened with Sir Paul McCartney and U2 singing 'Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club'. Other terrific acts were: The Scissor Sisters, Coldplay, The Stereophonics, Pink Floyd, etc. So how come an event like that that aims to do so much good is overshadowed by the events at Edinburgh over the past couple of days?

See here:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/PA_NEWA11763011120496162A000?source=PA%20Feed

Admittedly, there will be some protesters who want to do that, just protest and in a peaceful manner too. So who are these other louts and where have they come from? They seem to be the same sort of people who turn up at almost every large protest in the country, unwashed, with multiple piercings [not that there's anything wrong with piercings!], bedraggled hair and ready to cause as much mayhem as possible. Their violent behaviour seems to be targeted more against the police than anyone else.Could it be that there is a secret website somewhere:
http://www.rentamob.co.uk and these people are transported in lorry loads around the country to whichever protest they are required at?Let's hope that something can be done to help Africa, but somehow, I don't think it's going to be quite that simple.