What a sad day indeed.
Hope everyone is OK and didn’t make it to work / is safe at work / is now home witha cup of tea.
Mark
/Stuck at work, but all OK.
Seconded
We slag the froggies off but they would not put up with this.
Suspects would simply disappear…
Reporting in. Far enough out of town to not be affected,…apart from the skynews websites taking a battering.
My wife works in canary wharf, soon as I heard about it I told her to book into a hotel as it seems unlikely she will get home, I know theyve said they will try and get everythign up and running so people can get home but I just cant see it.
My sisters friend was on the liverpool street tube platform when the bomb went off, she ran straight out of the station and got a cab home, shes realy shaken up.
I hope they manage to catch the people who did this.
Sympathies for al the people injured and who have died.
My dad was on his way to park his car in Russell square. If it had gone off a short time later he would have been exactly where the bomb was.
Very sobering day !!
Chris
I work all over London. But last night was working in the Royal Opera House so I didn’t have to go in this morning. I always go the Aldgate station at 08:30am and go to Kings Cross.
A very sad day for many!
Home safe and sound. 3.5hr trek - river taxi from Canary Wharf to London Bridge and a long walk to Waterloo.
Although I have to say, I am proud to be a Londoner today. Without a functioning transport system hundreds of thousands of people made there way home in an orderly and stoic fashion; I didn’t hear one complaint. And quite right too, nobody should have to feel lucky to actually be going home, but that was clearly at the back of everybody’s minds.
One of my friends had the bus blow-up outside his window, and another works at Aldgate next door to the station and was evacuated from his building right past a line of covered bodies. Even that distant association feels too close to home.
Ian
those t0ssers responsible screwed up my day (and the 1000’s trying to get home). I was in the office for a total of 35 mins before evacuated. (My office is literally on top of Liv St). Spent whole day sitting in a bar watching News 24 and ringing up for updates from our helpdesk. By 3.30pm (completely bored of coffee and diet cokes), decided to head home and struggled/ travelled back to my mate’s house in Shenfield who then drove me back home. God knows how much our firm lossed on revenue! Has been an unreal and sad day
Are you for real? I couldn’t give a flying fcuk about your firm’s lost revenue - there’ll be plenty time in the weeks/months ahead for you to recoup.
Some people woke up this morning and didn’t know that this was to be their last day on this Earth. I hope their passing was quick and painless. My sympathies are with their families and friends.
Tomt I feel sooo sorry for you, what a bad day you must have had…
Calling morals on this one is very tough, after we invaded both Afganistan and iraq we’re no angels in this matter, sadly many innocent lives have been lost on both sides…
…And frankly, if the UK had been invaded and we had covert operations blowing up the invader capitol cities then we’d be cheering them along.
It’s all a matter of perspective.
it is a sad day
edited as I agree with Ian and until all the facts are in I was making huge sweeping assumptions, my sincere apologies.
Contentious Mark.
Personally I think you could have stopped at “it is a sad day”
I’m sorry Ian, I know it’s a harsh point. It is very real and I went through Aldgate at about 7:30 so only an hour out… And it was only because I had to do the early shift today.
I remember not so long ago when everyone was up in arms about sending our troops into Iraq, we knew then that this would be the consequencies
I really don’t know, there’s so much spin and speculation that us meer peasants will never know the full story, so it’s hard to judge anything, but there’s two phrases the spring to mind;
“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”
And more so:
“If we lived in world where it was an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, surely it would be inhabited by blind toothless people”
I have sat with my students tonight and given a 2 minutes silence for those who had their last day on Earth today, so honestly, I am mortified.
But tell me, as no WMD’s have ever been found (or evidence thereof), why did we invade Iraq? It certainly wasn’t for the craic of it all… I don’t know if it was for oil, but to say we were rightous in our actions is like saying the Crusades were justified
I am playing Devils advocate, but if all we can think of is to kill and main those responsible, then the cycle just keeps on running and more and more people die.
One of these days it could be me, my family, my friends or anyone else I hold dear.
Don’t get me wrong Mark, I don’t necessarily disagree with you, it was more a comment on timing.
But I guess everybody handles the events of yesterday differently: Tomt in his manner (our office, the McDonalds building, is also on Liverpool St, overlooking the Station. When I last spoke to them they still hadn’t accounted for everybody), I was more reflective and you analytical.
It’s interesting that you use two biblical phrases, one from the old testament and one from the new. The stone casting phrase was decreed (if that’s how you’d put it) as progress from the old testament’s law of ‘eye for an eye’, which in itself was progress from the state of affairs at the time of ‘you stub my toe, I kill your family’. Not a lot of progress going on yesterday though.
Is War a bad thing? Yes
Am I glad Saddam has gone? Yes
Would Saddam of killed more people in the time since the invasion than the War did? So they say
Did they believe there were WMDs? Yes
Did they really believe they were a threat to us? No, although perhaps indirectly (a nuke/chemical attack yesterday and it’s unlikely both of us would be able to have this discussion)
Was Iraq really about oil? Personally I’d say more politics, leaders tend to get re-elected after Wars
Is there a simple answer? No, sadly
I agree with you on the cycle of death, but I don’t get a sense that people are looking for revenge, just security. And unfortunately whilst there are ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ in the world there will always be sadness, which can turn into suffering and anger, neither of which should be ignored. Bob Geldorf has done a lot in the last few weeks to point out that we can help some of them to help themselves. That has its own complications, but tackling the angry ones is a whole different dimension of complexity!
Ian
Well the 2nd quote is from Gandhi, one of the greatest people to have graced this Earth in recent times! He showed that you can instigate massive political change without spliiing a single drop of blood!
He showed that compassion and kindness are always going to be better than violence and threats.
I agree with the sadness that’ll eventually turn into anger, but the point I guess is that it really is so needless! There’s more than enough food to feed the entire planet 10x over! So why do people starve to death?
There’s more than enough room as it stands, so why do people fight over small patches of land? Why do people steal from others when they can provide from themselves?
I’m analytical to the point of not wanting to be overwhelmed with sentimentality, ultimately it’s becasue I like to try and see things from everyone’s point of view, not just my bias point of view IYSWIM. There are reasons for these things happening, to quite Shakespere:
“If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that”
As I sai before, I don’t know, but I’d rather try and be open about what I feel and enter a discussion about events rather than just shut up my dorrs and windows and lock myself away
Good to see that today its business as usual even though police advising to avoid london to let transport get back to normal, all our team got in on time and we had a nice big queue of people waiting for us to open which I thought summed up the spirit of london perfectly.