I know it hasn’t been long since I ranted about the craziness in the UK media nowadays, but listening to local and national radio tends to have this effect on me. One of the main headlines over the last few days have been the revelations from the Terrorism Trial which found five British Citizens guilty of terrorism charges. Part of the surveillance footage showed the now-convicted terrorists in conversation with two men who later (a year or so later) went on to bomb the London underground (7 Jul 05).

This “find” has motivated the survivors (or at least a media-friendly subset of them) of the London Tube Bombing to call for an “Independent Inquiry” into the Security Service (MI5) investigation. As with lots of things which become news items in the UK it has the air of self evident truth and “justice” but on second glance it really is pointlessly mad.

The radio news I have been listening to has been crowing over the “outrage” the survivors have felt that MI5 had two of the bombers under surveillance a year before the blast, with the implication (often stated) that if the Service had acted against them earlier they would have disrupted the bombing and the 55 odd people would not have died. Sounds reasonable enough, doesn’t it? Continue reading →