ITN News Review - Saturday 30th June 2007

I watched the late afternoon news programe on ITN where we commenced with the "terrorist" attack on Glasgow airport. This had only just happened a couple of hours previously and therefore details were still quite sparse, however, ITN had already managed to obtain some short images of the incident which had been recorded on mobile phone by a member of the public

The postition appeared to be that two men had driven a 4WD vehicle laden with gas bottles into the main terminal. They had then jumped out and lit petrol bombs which they threw at the vehicle in an effort to create an explosion. However, the gas bottles did not explode and one of the "terrorists" set himself on fire. We got to see a short video of the car on fire and clouds of smoke with people running about in orange reflective jackets.

As I said, details were still quite sketchy at this stage however, ITN advised us that this was " a crime and not an accident". They requested that anyone who had taken any images of the incident contact them.

We then went to London for a rundown on their potential terrorist outrage the day before, when two car bombs were dicovered, similarly laden with large gas canisters. We saw members of the public interviewed who advised that they were just getting along with matters as normal. The government have said that "they wont give in to terrorists". Images of CCTV cameras were shown and it was explained that these are our "electronic eyes". Another meeting of Cobra, the governments emergency committee was to be held, last night.

I am at a bit of loss to understand what is meant by " we wont give in to terrorists". What is it that these terrorists actually want that we wont give them? I was under the impression that they believe they are fighting in a Holy war or jihad and that the West is the devil; so, in effect, they dont actually want anything other than to win the war. If one looks at it from their perspective, is it not America and the UK who started the war with the invasion of Iraq ? So we could not "give in", even if we wanted to, because matters have now escalated beyond that level.

We switched over to another threat, this time the weather. We saw images of six or seven men sitting round a table, looking into their laptops. These are our "flood experts". What the laptops have to do with the rain was not said but we could all expect more rain over the next few days. This could be potentially critical in certain areas and so we got another run down of what was happening in the areas which were hit by floods early in the week.

We saw the army with a stack of boats which sat inside one another and they were busy unloading them, one by one. We saw an image of a still deeply flooded residential street and were told that the brown water, which still sits nearly up to car roof level, is contaminated now. It was not said what it was contaminated with. However, maybe the contamination is human based because we were also told of robbing and looting from the flood ravaged houses.This will obviously add to people's fears as will the constant threat of rain. No sign of any shanty towns yet though. We will see.

Good news now though to finish. The concert for Diana which is being held, today, at the new Wembley stadium. We saw images of Harry and Wills being shown round Wembley and then we got to see them meeting adorable children. We were reminded of their mother's love of children and we saw some images of her. Harry and Wills spoke of their mother and how they did not want her forgotten. As if she could be. We were then told how good Harry is with children and how he takes after Diana in this respect. To emphasise this, we saw Harry patting a wee girl on the head. Jokes were cracked between the two Princes in the manner of Ant & Dec, the loveable Geordie lads.

And that was about it. You can see how "our lives" are headed. One one side, we have constant fear, terrorists, weather, economic crashes, food price rises, thieves etc., etc. We can help protect ourselves against this by allowing our own freedom to be compromised by CCTV and compulsory ID cards. Surely this is fact "giving in to the terrorists" but somehow that point has been forgotten. In the meantime, things are not too bad. We have our monarchy and they are the "good guys". That has been the entire theme of this weeks news, when we have seen Charles linked with Nelson Mandela and the Queen having to go "cap in hand" to Gordon Brown for monies for the upkeep of Buckingham Palace.



cheers