Ooh, terrorism, everyone panic!

Yesterday, there was a terror attack in my capital city.

Let’s face it, only five people were killed. Okay, that’s slightly unusual in the UK, and in Europe, because the gun laws are more sensible here, so mass killings tend to be due to terrorism rather than local nutters playing around with firearms. All the same, 5 individuals out of 8 million (London’s population) is not really very many, is it? Far more Londoners die of natural causes every day.

And yet, it’s still the top news story here. It accompanies the story of a tighter restriction of electronics (including laptops) entering the UK and USA on flights operated by certain Middle Eastern airlines. The timing is a bit suspect, isn’t it?

If this seems a callous reaction to the ‘terror’, I apologise, but however you look at it, 5 deaths are negligible in the grand scheme of things (i.e. they fit well within the average daily mortality figures), and utterly disproportionate to the news coverage afforded to them. You might as well just turn international news into one long eulogy, if you’re going to mourn every death that happens in a city the size of London.

My recommendation to Londoners, Britons and brothers and sisters around the world: get a grip. Ignore these feeble attempts at ‘terror’, and ignore the alarmist news stories that surround the acts and usher in ever more draconian ‘security’ measures. Get a grip on reality, and keep calm and carry on.

Update: 24th March 16:40: Last week, the US Air Force accidentally destroyed a mosque in Syria. The target was apparently the building next door (funny how these laser-guided strikes never quite seem to get it right, when Google Earth can find an address anywhere in the world in seconds), but the Pentagon still claimed it managed to kill ‘dozens’ of Al-Qaeda members. Rather lucky for a bungled mission, don’t you think? Meanwhile, at least 45 worshippers were killed and around 100 others left injured, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. If you want to see real terror, that’s what it looks like.