London 07/07/05

A brief feeling of elation, celebration, positive news, looking forward... and then it was gone. I wasn't going to post anything about the recent events in London but this story on theregister.co.uk has prompted me to comment.

I can only agree with the sentiments of the above story. What the f*ck are people thinking? Like many I'm sure, I turned to the web (BBC News) to find out what the hell was going on last Thursday morning (I remember doing the same thing the afternoon the reports started to filter through on 11/09/01). What had happened and how bad was it? Facts, not opinion, are all that matter in the immediate aftermath. If this is the future of reporting, you can keep it.

As I'm writing this ITN are appealing for anybody who took pictures in the immediate aftermath to contact them, or tell them your story or, and I can't honestly believe this, "if you're one of the people in this remarkable photograph of the bus, please contact us." WTF?

Is a news story only a story if it's accompanied by grisly photographs of dead and injured with neatly packaged soundbites of "I heard a large bang and saw a blue flash" variety? Is this what we have become? This isn't news, it's entertainment and I for one don't want to be involved and I suspect[hope] most of my fellow Northern Ireland countrymen feel the same.

"This species has amused itself to death." Roger Waters, 1992