A sense of proportion

A week of ‘terrorist’ incidents: two cars in London (not exactly car bombs) that didn’t go off, and one driven into Glasgow airport. Now we’re on “critical” terrorist alert.

Three incidents. Not ‘professional’ terrorist incidents, but bumbling, ineffectual homebrew attacks: more Inspector Clouseau than anything else. Incidents on a level of sophistication (and danger) more akin to teenage ‘joyriders’ than to a serious terrorist organisation like the IRA or Al Qaeda[1].

Contrast the “nothing to worry about” attitude to equally (if not more) serious incidents such as this, which I find altogether more scary. And contrast the attitude to killer drivers, who are commonly given no more than a slap on the wrist, no matter how dangerous they are (and in this country, drivers kill more people in a week than terrorists have in total since the IRA stopped).

If there are serious terrorists out there, how likely are they to announce their intention to attack with a round of buffoonery like this?

Much more worrying: these were apparently completely off the police’s radar. At a guess, they really are just saddo kids, and have no affiliation at all to anyone the security forces are watching. Smells like the seeds of fear and distrust that The Liar has so abundantly scattered in recent years, coming home to roost.

[1] That is to say, the Al Qaeda of “9/11”. Nowadays the term seems to have become a general-purpose bogeyman for anything islamic and bad. Or indeed anyone we happen to kill in the occupied countries.