74 point drop in the FTSE 100? That's just a bit beyond normal trading, the transport will nearly all be back on track apart from the tube which isn't going to be restarted till the crime scene investigation is complete. It's back to business as usual. At least as far as it can be, with 37 now declared dead and who knows how many more to come (that's without counting the undoubted fatalities from the Tavistock Square Bus) the pain for many will take many months, even years to fade. We shall ensure that the memory of this heinous crime does not.
London is an historic City. It survived the Blitz. In the words Tony Blair gave the nation tonight, It can and will survive this through the "quiet but true strength" that all people of the United Kingdom possess.
Every day that I went to University for my lectures I took the circle line from Liverpool Street to Aldgate and often back again. In the news pictures of Aldgate station, corralled off by blue tape you can see the purple sign of London Metropolitan University's Calcutta house in the background. The same train I took every day, this morning conveyed a despicable enemy, a villain without remorse or decency.
It is still unclear what the total casualty number will be for that particular bomb but I am thankful that I am not among its victims. I am resolved to never become one of its victims.
To that end I will not suffer prejudice or violence to continue in its wake, nor will I cower in fear or lash out at those fundamental principles of decency that it sought to attack in some form of misguided sympathy with its evil.
For that is what it means to be the victim of a terrorist attack, it is why our enemy can be so potent. The slain victims have their numbers reborn in triplicate in those who are shocked into submission, self doubt and the petty recrimination of the institutions who's mutual protection was paid for by the blood of their ancestors.
I say it again. I will never be its victim.
God Bless
John