Bad news innit, but don't you feel angry? Don't you want to fight "these dickheads" - face to face?

Personally I am up for a more united society in the face of this adversity, but I see the extremist response of far right groups as a hugely regrettable dead-cert.

Lets hope the rozzers make some decent arrests after these ones. . . good luck to them.
 

United society; in general, I'm all for it mate.

However, no matter how disenfranchised or marginalised these guys who did the bombings feel, once they start indiscrimiately bombing public transport, I'm afraid I go into self-interest mode. I'm not a big enough man to sympathise with their plight, I just want them taken out.

The problem with revenge attacks (in addition to being wrong and stupid) is escalation and racial polarisation in the interests of self-preservation.

What I'm worried about it we get a situation where, cnuts bomb tube. Skinheads torch mosque in revenge. Angry mosque-goers beat up skinhead in revenge. Skinheads go down into Tower Hamlets and beat the crap out of random Muslims in revenge. Enraged Muslims roam streets of Tower Hamlets looking for random white people to have a go at in revenge.

Then, we've arrived at a total "them" vs "us" and it doesn't matter who's wrong or right anymore, you've just got to defend yourself. And that means that when you're about to get a good kicking from an asian gang because you happen to be a convenient white person, and there are no cops around, what you probably want to see arriving on the scene is a gang of skinheads. Bad scene.

Kind of like the situation that is reported in the US maximum security prison system. If the documentaries I've seen on it are remotely correct (cos I'm no expert), racism is basically entrenched and if you're white you basically have to align with the white people (and vice versa) in order to avoid getting a good kicking or worse. Even if you weren't particularly racist to start with.

We don't want that in London. And I don't think it's going to - this is an extreme scenario I'm painting here, but seems to me that it's at the end of the road you've started on once you start torching mosques.
 

I think (hope) it will happen the other way round. I think it's a bit like the old cub scouts - shaking with their left hand, traditionally the spear was held in the right hand and the shield in the left, hence a left handed shake shows a greater level of trust (or an understanding of Mutally Assured Destruction - but that's just pessimistic).

I see multi-cultural Britain finally coming together, finally working our who it is having not really known for 50 odd years - I saw the other day to my surprise that the UK is apparently still 80% honky white dudes, however I feel the 20% to be as British as tube and the London bus - they make us rich, they are an engrained part of us the British whole. Curry is our favourite food, British Indian cusine has nothing to do with Indian cusine.

It's time to stand shoulder to shoulder and banish our far right skinhead tossers in the same boat as our fundamentalist kiddy suicide bombers - the boat outta our Manor - we grew up in the same country as both groups.

You don't need to try and sympathise with their plight - their plight is twisted, wrong and wholly selfish. I do apprecitate what you're saying living in the middle and all. Stay safe.
 

It's going to be very difficult to prevent what one might term a "right wing" response here. Even amongst open-minded, right-thinking liberals like the contributors to this Blog, there will be an instinctive, nervous, self-preservatory response to what has gone on. Who is going to catch your eye next time you are on the tube? What is your first thought going to be when you see an Asian/Arab man with a backpack stepping onto a tube train? We don't want to think these things, but deep down we all know what a suicide bomber is most likely to look like. Not all Muslims are suicide bombers, but all suicide bombers are Muslims (to date, at least) and will most likely look a certain way. Is it wrong to think this way? I don't think so, but I think it is the duty of the right-thinking members of society to prevent these inevitable sentiments from passing over into a more dangerous sense of "them and us". The more these incidents happen though, the more difficult it will become - and I guess that is just what the terrorists want. Hughesy.
 

Hmmm... sitting watching television minding my own business just now but was moved to look out of the window upon hearing a very loud "fuck you, you white bastard, I'll kill you you white bastard". Some friendly bloke in a car driving past some fat white bloke on the street outside (who I presume had given the guys in the car some shit?).

Tell me there isn't a bit of tension in the city right now?

Still, if it wasn't for people getting shot/blown up lately, I'd just put it down to normal life on the fringes of Tower Hamlets.