qwghlm.co.uk : because all the other domain names were taken

Chris, your theories are often spot on, but the idea that the North-South divide is somehow the salient split in our society is patently absurd. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that the bombers were Muslim, and the next suicide bomber could be Geoffrey Boycott?

The fact is that by the very nature of terrorism, it just takes a few nutters to cause mass damage. This time they were from Leeds targeting London. Next time they could from London targeting Paris. It really doesn’t matter.

And what does poverty have to do with suicide bombers or fundamentalist Islam? Take a look at the profiles of the bombers: they weren’t desperate paupers; they believed in what they were doing. And anyway, London has some of the poorest areas in the entire EU so a North-South divide is a flawed oversimplification.

And whilst you recognise that it is a gross generalisation, you may be taking the (perfectly understandable) desire to trumpet the wonders of London a little bit to seriously. London suffers from the same divisions as everywhere else in the UK. When did you last see a white toilet cleaner in London? Would you like to send your child to some of the Bangladeshi schools in parts of London? Sure it’s important at the moment that Londoners tell each other how wonderful they are just now to help them deal with their fear, but don’t let that degenerate into blaming outsiders. And don’t let is cloud the fact that in London, like everywhere else in the UK, there is next to no integration between Muslims and any other ethnic/religious group. The concept of London as a homogeneous and harmonious society is something we may wish for, but not something that anybody who has spent more than seconds in the capital could believe to be true.

If you don’t think there are potential suicide bombers in London, you are doing your city a dangerous disservice.

Nooo! I absolutely do not think the North-South divide is the salient split, or indeed any sort of salient split – it is highly arbitrary and blatantly does not apply as a universal rule on everything, if anything. London is not a multicultural paradise – it has several areas which are little better than ghettos, just as Leeds is not merely a race riot waiting to happen; it’s admittedly quite unfair of me to pass judgment on Leeds when I have never even visited the city. The speculative point I was trying to make – badly – was that the two cities may have different demographics, different social ills and different levels and methods of interaction between its white and Muslim communities. Leeds Muslims may have different needs and issues from London Muslims; and in fact there may well be distinctions that could apply between different subgroups of London Muslims, say, Iraqi descent or Bangladeshi descent. Sorry. Didn’t meant to sound as disingenuous as it may have looked.

…in London, like everywhere else in the UK, there is next to no integration between Muslims and any other ethnic/religious group.

Your other points, Martin, are spot on (if not an argument against what Chris was saying, given his clarification). But that comment really doesn’t make much sense. To even be approaching accuracy, it means you have to discount the huge numbers of functionally secular Muslims from the London population (which means, once you also discount the functionally secular Christians, Jews, Hindus and Sikhs, that you’ve removed a pretty massive chunk of London’s populace from your analysis of ethnic relations in the capital). And even then, I see little evidence that integration from overtly religious Muslims is any worse than it is from other comparably orthodox faith groups – Hassidic Jews, Sikhs, or any number of Christian denominations that are primarily the preserve of one ethnic group. Yes, people form communities based on similarities. But they will happily live next to, do business with and work alongside those who are different. That’s not some pie-in-the-sky fantasy of what London is, and it’s not some noble statement about the potential for human understanding, it’s just a boring, mundane observation of everyday life.

There’s also the point that I’m currently trying to get my head around the fact that one of them appears to have lived in Aylesbury. If the North-South divide starts there these days, then life just got even weirder.

Also exactly how would ID cards have protected us from this attack by UK citizens? Unless you have to show your ID card to buy a train or tube ticket, and at point of purchase your ID is checked against a list of people who aren’t known to be terrorists but just might be (this list might contain approximately 60,000,000 entries). This is absurd. Spend the cash on intelligence officers, police etc. rather than sound-bite friendly box ticking exercises Tony.

Tom – I accept that on re-reading my “next to no integration” comment this morning, it isn’t accurate or helpful. I was just trying to make the point that we need to work for integration throughout the whole country, not just in the North.

Chris – I haven’t been to Leeds either so at least we are both speaking from similar levels of ignorance!

You know, you make the north/south divide point, but no one has actually raised this question – what if they weren’t muslim fundamentalists at all, but Yorkshire seperatists?

Ok, spurious…unless you’ve been to Leeds.