Skip to main content

Fear itself

What is the very worst that the people so far questioned in the UK could have inflicted against us?

OK, let us assume that they could have seized control of ten aeroplanes- say Jumbos- carrying about 450 passengers. Let us further assume that each mission was "successful"- so they kill a maximum of 4,500 people over the Atlantic. Horrific.

I think we should view this in context: last year the death toll on British roads was 3221. In the USA the death toll from road accidents in 2005 was 43,443.

Now, according to New Republic, the USA regards the UK as a hornet's nest of terrorism- Pontiac, I notice, gets off without censure.

At the end of the day, Osama Bin Laden lives in a cave. He is not an evil genius- he is a delusional maniac- a poor little rich boy who was sent round the bend by seeing the violence of the Anti-Soviet Afghan war.

His follwers are delusional "Islamic" nobodies- they may be mad or bad or both, but mostly they are just sad- losers in the lottery of life. These are not and should not be treated as bigger enemies than Hitler. If we think that they are then I really think that both History and Maths should be better taught in British schools!

We live with risk every day, and we have clearly changed our behaviour since 2001: "the terrorists have won". However, if we continue down the line of restricting freedom then maybe we have already proved our decadence by our inability to count- that we have lost our sense of perspective.

"Thewaarontear"! George Bush's insult to free people- and the biggest danger to democracy since the end of the Cold war.

It is not what the terrorists can do to us that we should be afraid of- it is what our fear of terrorism can do to our society that we should worry about:

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself".

Comments

Anonymous said…
I've seen it pointed out that the terrorists' record in the UK - 40 something innocent deaths and transport chaos - is comparable to that of Railtrack.

Popular posts from this blog

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop

Media misdirection

In the small print of the UK budget we find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British Finance Minister) has allocated a further 15 billion Pounds to the funding for the UK track and trace system. This means that the cost of the UK´s track and trace system is now 37 billion Pounds.  That is approximately €43 billion or US$51 billion, which is to say that it is amount of money greater than the national GDP of over 110 countries, or if you prefer, it is roughly the same number as the combined GDP of the 34 smallest economies of the planet.  As at December 2020, 70% of the contracts for the track and trace system were awarded by the Conservative government without a competitive tender being made . The program is overseen by Dido Harding , who is not only a Conservative Life Peer, but the wife of a Conservative MP, John Penrose, and a contemporary of David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford. Many of these untendered contracts have been given to companies that seem to have no notewo

Bournemouth absence

Although I had hoped to get down to the Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth this year, simple pressure of work has now made that impossible. I must admit to great disappointment. The last conference before the General Election was always likely to show a few fireworks, and indeed the conference has attracted more headlines than any other over the past three years. Some of these headlines show a significant change of course in terms of economic policy. Scepticism about the size of government expenditure has given way to concern and now it is clear that reducing government expenditure will need to be the most urgent priority of the next government. So far it has been the Liberal Democrats that have made the running, and although the Conservatives are now belatedly recognising that cuts will be required they continue to fail to provide even the slightest detail as to what they think should guide their decisions in this area. This political cowardice means that we are expected to ch