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The German magazine ‘Spiegel On-line’ is reporting that something calling itself ‘The Secret Organisation of Al-Qaeda in Europe’ has claimed reponsibility for this morning’s attacks on London.
Allegedly the triumphal claim was made on a website. The article does not link to the website but does include an apparent screenshot of the relevant posting.
This is all unsubtantiated and could be complete bunkum. Who knows?
UPDATE: I have just had a call from a friend who has been stuck down in Aldgate all day. He was on his way to work when the attack occured but was unscathed. Apparently the police are now allowing people to travel home from Central London. The cops he has spoken to have told him that the death toll is now 45 but this is unconfirmed.
For anyone who may be worried about relatives or friends in Central London, the Police Casualty Bureau hotline number is now open on 0870 1566 344.
UPDATE: 33 fatalities now confirmed. I hope this figure does not inflate but I rather fear that it may.
Things look pretty normal round here but then I am stuck in the North London ‘burbs and the carnage is all concentrated around Central London and the West End.
My mobile telephone appears to be working just fine but the public transport network has been shut down entirely.
The MSM is still reporting 2 fatalities which seems mercifully low given the timing, location and nature of the attacks. Maybe this figure will rise as the day passes, but I profoundly hope that it doesn’t.
Tony Blair is winging his way back to London from the G8 summit in Edinburgh and George Bush is about to make a statement.
More later.
UPDATE: Unconfirmed reports that death toll has risen to 10.
ANOTHER UPDATE: The MSM is now reporting ‘many fatalities’ but no numbers. Either they genuinely don’t know or do know and won’t say.
The entire London Underground network is closed following explosions at
Liverpool Street, Aldgate, Edgware Road, Old Street and Russell Square. This
is presently being blamed on a “power surge”. Curious.
Update: A bus has exploded in Russell Square and there are reports of two more buses having been bombed elsewhere in London. Looks like it is a terrorist attack.
(Note: This is one of the regular Samizdatistas blogging from the Canary Wharf office district in London – anonymously because he is at work).
Update:Sky News is reporting “90 casualties” at Aldgate. Transport unions are reporting “some fatalities”. The Home Secretary has referred to “terrible casualties”. There are apparently two trains trapped underground at Edgware Road. I have heard a hearsay report that three unexploded bombs were found at King’s Cross.
London has just won the right to host the 2012 Olympics.
Even in this era of intense news management and political spin, a public figure will still occasionally (and often inadvertantly) let a few morsels of truth slip out.
For the past two decades or so, and by every standard that can be accurately measured, participation in the established political process has been in steady decline. Voter turnout is consistently lower than it was in the 1970’s and membership of the main political parties is but a fraction of what it was in the 1950’s.
Not surprisingly, this has resulted in a hubbub of worry among the political classes with attendant brow-furrowing and hand-wringing over what should be done about it. Some of the more foolishly optimistic (or perhaps just ill-advised) politicos have launched themselves into toe-curlingly embarrassing campaigns to ‘get down with the kidz’ only to hurtle smack, dab into a wall of indifference. The less exhibitionist among them have been uttering dark murmurings about ‘compulsory voting’.
In the fullness of time, and as the disillusion spreads like sea-fog, I expect that those murmurings will become a demanding roar. In the meantime, the first member of the cabinet, former Defence Minister Geoff Hoon, has added his somewhat more audible murmur to the compulsion lobby.
I am not going to use this article to examine the arguments about compulsory voting, except to say that I am against it. More interesting to me (for the moment at least) is Mr. Hoon’s choice of words:
Mr Hoon said: “My fear is that as the older, more regular voters die, we will be left with a significant number of people for whom voting is neither a habit, nor a duty…”
Is that how Mr. Hoon thinks of voting? As a ‘habit’? As a ‘duty’? Where is the call to democratic arms? Where is the sizzle of enfranchised excitement? Where are the glamourous invocations of citizen empowerment? All long gone is the inescapable truth. Instead we are left with habit and duty.
If I were being charitable, I might suggest that Mr. Hoon chose his words for convenience rather than accuracy and that it would be unfair to second guess him on this basis. But I actually think that Mr. Hoon was being honest. Furthermore, I am prepared to extend to him the rare honour of actually speaking for the nation, or at least that ‘significant’ chunk of it for whom voting has become a sullen and thankless obligation, rather like slopping out the bedpan of an infirm and elderly relative while trying not to succumb to the guilt upon contemplation of the unspoken resolution that it would be better for everyone if they would just quickly and peacefully die.
Small wonder it is why young people don’t vote anymore.
Popular support for ID cards – never all that evident to me in the first place – has collapsed, according to this story in the Daily Telegraph this morning. The article, citing a YouGov poll, says support has dropped sharply in part due to the likely high cost of the cards.
I am of course pleased that Tony Blair and his oafish Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, are facing a serious setback on this issue. Nothing would give me more pleasure than if this most devious of administrations had to abandon this wrongheaded, expensive and oppressive scheme. But I cannot help feel a twinge of dismay that an assault on our liberties may be thwarted not because the UK electorate have grasped the principles at stake but because of the monetary cost. It makes one wonder whether we would happily sell our freedoms if the price were right.
I hope of course that I am dead wrong about that.
Only this past week, I found myself in a polite but rather pointed political discussion with one my elderly clients about the issue of ID cards. She was all in favour of them because, “we had them during them war and everyone was fine with them”. To which I retorted, “we had rationing during the war, do you want that brought back too?”.
Little did either of us suspect that minds infinitely superior to ours…blah..blah..blah:
Every individual in Britain could be issued with a “personal carbon allowance” – a form of energy rationing – within a decade, under proposals being considered seriously by the Government…
Under the scheme for “domestic tradeable quotas” (DTQs), or personal carbon allowances, presented to the Treasury this week, everyone – from the Queen to the poorest people living on state benefits – would have the same annual carbon allocation.
This would be contained electronically on a “ration card”, which could be the proposed ID card or a “carbon card” based on supermarket loyalty cards…
“This is a way that enables us to make the necessary annual changes without radical adjustments to our lives.
“It is about making the small changes year by year. It won’t stop us going on holiday. But it might constrain how many times we fly…”
For some time now there has been a hubbub of grumbling among the chattering classes about the vulgarity of “cheap air travel” with its attendant and intended benefit (or, in their eyes, problem) of modest earners being able to jet off to all manner of exotic destinations at the drop of a hat. “But it’s destroying the planet!” they all exclaim. This is not, I should add, a charge which is ever levelled at the organisers of global rock-concerts for Africa despite the fact that just distributing the various members of the Rockocracy to their appointed warbling-posts consumes enough energy to light up a medium-sized land mass.
But saving the planet is not the point or the object. The real cause of this latest drive for forced austerity is the abundance of something that, only a few short years ago, was an expensive luxury enjoyed by the privileged few. But when tattooed builders, single mothers and lowly clerks can spend several weeks a year wallowing on sun-kissed South-East Asian beaches or sampling the epicurean delights of Tuscany then they are obviously living far better lives than they deserve and something must be done to curtail them.
But it’s decidedly tricky to wrench people’s luxuries and pleasures from without a good reason. So, enter good reason: “global warming”. If the masses can be persuaded that the future of mankind depends on their austerity then not only will the meekly surrender their wordly goods, they will clamour to hand them over and humbly thank their lords and masters for being so benevolent, wise and caring.
Given that so many modern activities involve energy consumption, the political classes need only play their cards right and “saving the plant” can be developed into a tool of legitimisation for almost complete social control.
But I’m sure that they wouldn’t dare go that far.
Here is a list of the MPs who voted in favour of trying to make you have an ID card. Do you see your MP here? Let them know what you think of what they have done.
Special kudos to the 20 Labour MPs who put decency before party and refused to be go along with this disgraceful attempt to control you.
This appeared in the comment section of the previous post, writen by Michael Taylor. It is just too interesting to leave as a comment:
One thing we in the online community can do is to work to ensure transparency and accountability is brought to this process. We need to find out who has been pressing this scheme from its infancy: that doesn’t just mean finding the Labour Party hacks who’ve embraced it; it does not even just mean finding the Whitehall Committees which pushed it.
It means finding the details of the people who sat on that committee: it means getting their names and track records out in public. I want names and reasons and track records. Where possible, I would want those personal details which they would collect from us out there on the web for all to see. It also means tracking every single hardware and software supplier who is bidding for the work – again, we need personal names not company names. And then these people need to be monitored closely, and lobbied intensively. There needs to be absolutely no place for these securocrats to hide: there must be no secrecy, no privacy for them.
Let us also make sure we use the Freedom of Information Act aggressively to get this information: swamp them with requests for every detail of every person’s career who has ever been on any committee which has recommended any part of this scheme. If nothing else, such an intensive and personal campaign of transparency gives opponents of the scheme the best possible chance of keeping these people on the back foot.
Look, for example, at how angry the govt has got with the LSE’s report. That should be only the merest footfall, the tiniest ripple of administrative inconvenience and distributed informational opposition they must face. Do this, and we will win.
Michael Taylor.
Listening to Tony Blair addressing the EU parliament is a rather strange experience. He calls for reform of spending and recognising economic reality whilst at the same time declaring that he is a ‘passionate European’ and saying that he supports the idea of an intrusive welfare state.
That Blair’s views on the need to ‘liberalise’ makes him a Thatcherite radical in the eyes of many Continental politicians shows how truly doomed to long term stagnation and irrelevance the EU really is. It also shows Blair’s wish to be all things to all people and why in the long run NuLabour cannot help but choke on its own contradictions just as the Tories have.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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