The car bomb you are calling may be switched off - please try later!
23:42pm 2nd July 2007 Comments Comments (71)
Richard Littlejohn
Difficult to know whether to laugh or scream after the weekend of madness we've just been through. And it's not over yet, with the security level raised to 'critical' and another terrorist attack imminent.
So let's get the laughter out of the way first, something which wouldn't have been possible had the bombers succeeded and hundreds of innocent people been killed or maimed.
Mistake One as far as the jihadists were concerned was trying to set off car bombs in the West End of London. The chances of either vehicle staying put for long enough to detonate were always going to be negligible.
In Westminster, you can get ticketed at traffic lights. One of them was towed away because it was parked on a double yellow. The second was spotted by two alert paramedics attending to a paralytic drunk, a routine casualty of another quiet night under Labour's rock-around-the-clock drinking regime.
Incompetence: The car bomb failed to go off
We've only seen pictures of one side of the green Mercedes in the Haymarket. From a different angle, it too may well have been clamped, awaiting the removal truck.
Then there was the folly of relying on mobile phones to spark the explosion. Apparently they made at least two failed calls. What did they expect? Have you ever tried to get a signal in Piccadilly at chucking out time?
"The car bomb you are calling may be switched off. Please try later."
At least they didn't try loading their deadly cargo into a couple of SUVs. They'd have been beaten up by the provisional wing of Friends Of The Earth before they'd had time to set the fuse.
And if they forgot to pay the congestion charge, their chances of escaping detection would have been less than zero.
Meanwhile, in Glasgow the attack was foiled when the Jeep packed with petrol, propane and nails hit a bollard outside the terminal.
They would have needed a 4x4 just to get over the Crazy Golf speed humps on the approach road. Only in Britain could traffic calming and wheel clamping make a major contribution to homeland security.
My favourite moment was the interview with the have-a-go hero at the airport who helped apprehend one of the would-be bombers. His account went something like: "I saw this Asian guy running towards me shouting 'Allah' — so I battered him."
Go on yerself, big man. I'm surprised he hasn't been charged with racially-aggravated assault.
Curiously, by yesterday morning this clip had vanished from the TV news websites — along with reports of passengers yelling "Let the bastard burn" as police grappled with the suspect who set himself on fire.
Call me flippant, but gallows humour is the only thing which is going to get us through this with our equanimity intact.
It's best not to dwell on the enormity of what has led us here. In yesterday's Mail, Melanie Phillips summarised superbly not just the deranged evil of those who seek to destroy us, but also the frightening criminal negligence, stubborn stupidity and callous indifference of those charged with protecting us.
Don't blame the police or the intelligence service, this is a mess made by politicians. I felt like retching when Gordon Brown sauntered on camera to announce that the safety of the British people was paramount.
Here is a man who for the past ten years has been one of the two most prominent members of a government which has turned Britain into a playground for jihadists.
Labour tore up border controls, allowing a mass influx of Islamist psychopaths from all over the globe. Radical preachers and terrorist recruiting sergeants were encouraged to settle here. They were fed and watered, handed benefits, council houses and free cars.
Two years after 9/11, Captain Hook was still given a police guard to peddle his message of hatred and murder on the streets of Finsbury Park. Omar Bakri was safely tucked up in free accommodation in Edmonton and driving a brand new people carrier paid for by the mug British taxpayer.
These were but two among tens of thousands of Muslims living among us who make no secret that they hate Western society and intend to establish an Islamic state in Britain. Yet Gordon Brown's government wasn't interested.
Those of us who had the audacity to question the folly of allowing Islamic radicalism to foment in this country in the name of 'diversity' and 'multiculturalism' were smeared as 'racists'.
Background checks on those coming here were somewhere between cursory and non-existent. It turns out that almost all the members of the terror cell involved in the weekend's failed attacks were doctors.
Why the hell are we importing newly-qualified doctors from Iraq when we're training thousands of home-grown medical students for the dole queue?
Two men still on the run are described as members of a Middle Eastern terror cell who moved to Britain last year. How did that happen? Who voted to make this country a safe haven for Middle East terrorists? Why were they allowed in? And if they were known terrorists, why weren't they subsequently rounded up and kicked out?
Don't expect any sensible answers. And don't expect anything to change, either. Under Labour, the 'human rights' of terrorists always come way ahead of the safety of British citizens.
We're being treated to the same fine words, platitudes and trite analysis from the usual crowd of useful idiots we hear after every Islamic terrorist attack.
All you need to know is that the Government has no intention of 'getting tough' and the calls to the Muslim 'community' to offer up the extremists in their midst will fall on deaf ears.
We can only thank God that this little gang were so inept. Laugh while you can, next time there might be nothing to laugh about.
Let the bastards burn.
