"Where were you, when the world stopped turning ... "

"... on that September day?" asks JuliaM.



I was working as Duty Manager in a call centre run by ONdigital, later to be ITV Digital, purveyors of digital-TV-through-yer-aerial in the days when ten extra channels and the odd footie match were deemed to be enough to sell your soul for. One of the things we were promoting was the sale of Integrated Digital Televisions, or IDTVs. As a consequence, we needed to have an example of each model available close by so we could guide customers through the various screen options by going through the stages ourselves with the customer on the line. I was on the early shift, having started at 8.00 am, and the room was busy taking calls from some of our one million or so customers. I was looking after six team managers, each with a team of about 12 agents, so the noise in the room was considerable.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw something quite remarkable: a plane flying into the side of a skyscraper. I assumed it was one of the company's action movies and ignored it, but then the same footage was played over and over again. The technology behind the digital TV system was flaky to say the least, and I wondered if there had been a transmission fault and part of the film was playing in a loop. And then I saw the BBC news banner across the bottom of the screen, as the programme returned to the studio and its ashen-faced presenters. It was then that I realised what had happened - and was still happening. I actually saw the second plane as it approached the second tower and, with an awful inevitability, pierced the building and exploded.

I have often had a dream where I am watching a large passenger plane slowly approaching the ground, knowing that it was not landing but crashing, and that everyone aboard would shortly be killed. The dream is always accompanied by a feeling of utter dread and horror, and I always wake up in a sweat. This was that dream made all too real, and watching it my mouth was dry and my heart was rising in my chest.

As the story developed, more and more of the people in the room stopped what they were doing and gathered around the screens. At the same time, the volume of calls dropped dramatically (the whole country seemed to have been watching) and, as if by some agreement, each team left one person online to answer calls while the rest watched the unfolding horror. I later learned that many of the conversations with customers were about the developing events in New York and not about Sky Sports Two. A 'live floor' in a call centre can be a very noisy place, but Green Wing became eerily quiet for a long time as we all watched and digested the meaning of what we were seeing. I left for work that night and got on the bike, knowing that the world had just changed utterly, and not for the better.

My heartfelt sympathies today go out to all of those who lost loved ones in the atrocity (there is no other word for it). The sight of the poor souls who were forced to choose between being burned alive and jumping to their deaths will never leave me.

I am not at all convinced that we know, or will ever know, the truth behind what really caused these events, and I am sure that some very bad and even wicked decisions were made in the aftermath which have scarred the world for ever, but this is not the time to talk of these. All I can express tonight is my sympathy with those affected by the events, my admiration of the bravery of those who rallied to help, and in many cases lost their lives doing so, and my utter disbelief that any human being could think that a righteous cause could be advanced by such an act of monumental wickedness.

Peace.

Where were you?

It is said that for any major event, we can always remember where we were at the time we heard the news.

I can remember the assassination of John F Kennedy in November 1963. I was ten, and had just moved to Leeds a few months before. I was walking to a friend's house and he met me in the road outside, tears rolling down his face, saying "It's all over!" He was 10 too, but had an advanced sense of social responsibility. Where we used to write the names of football teams or pop groups on our Maths book covers, he would just write the word CARE. He was a bit of a knob, really, but a good friend, too. I might be wronging him: he might have been 11.

It seems incredible that the terrible events of 11 September 2001 are nine years in the past. I was working as the duty manager of a call centre (anyone remember ITV Digital? Heh.) and was sitting with a team of technical support guys, working on some coaching programme or other. We supported the 'new' digital televisions (massive things the size of a small car) and had several running in the wing. I was watching one out of the corner of my eye, and couldn't believe what I saw. There was a skyscraper, with huge amounts of smoke coming out of it, and the voiceover was saying that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Centre. I was watching in horror, when another plane flew into another skyscraper. I assumed it was a replay of the first plane, and so did some of the presenters, as they were watching the same feed as we were. There was a lot of talk of an horrific accident, probably involving a light plane, but when the second plane hit, the awful truth - that this was a deliberate act - came home to everyone. As the knowledge sank in, I remember a cold, crawling feeling up the back of my neck, as I realised that the world had just changed for ever. Call volumes dwindled to nothing, and we all sat motionless and speechless as the awful events unfolded.

Even at the time, my main concern was with how the Americans would react, and I fully expected a violent and crushing response somewhere along the line. What I didn't expect (and neither did anyone else over here, except perhaps Tony Blair) was that America would wage horrific war on a country that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda or global terrorism, and in so doing turn what was an isolated act of nihilistic brutality into a massive and global jihad against the West and Western values.

One difficulty I had in the aftermath of these awful events was the American reaction on a personal and social level. I hope any American readers will take this in the spirit of kindness it is meant, but the American reaction was as if nothing like this had ever happened before. I wanted to tell them that we had had decades of the IRA placing bombs in pubs and under cars, killing innocent women and children, we had had an MP killed by a car bomb in the House of Commons in 1979, and we had seen an attack on the Grand Hotel, Brighton in 1984 in which an attempt was made to assassinate the Prime Minister, in which five people died and many more were horribly injured. We knew all about terrorism, thanks very much; even though the scale of ours was less, it lasted for decades and we learned to live with it. And all this at a time when the IRA was substantially funded by NORAID, an American organisation which supplied the IRA with funds and (it is alleged) armaments, and when on every visit to the USA Gerry Adams was fêted as a hero. I suppose in those days there were 'good' terrorists and 'bad' terrorists. That stuck in the throat a bit.

This is not to minimise the dreadful events of 9/11. It was the worst terrorist atrocity in the history of the world, by a big margin, and we join together to offer sympathy and solidarity with our American brothers and sisters. As a nation, you handled it with dignity, and you have my respect for that.

9/11 changed the world for ever. The reaction of Western governments was always going to be a difficult call, but from where I am sitting the world is a far more dangerous place now than it was on 9/10. Instead of dealing with the cause of the fire, we seem to have thrown petrol on it. But that's politicians, not people.

Outrageous

From today's Daily Telegraph, this:

Civil servants feared inquiry into 7/7 bombings would focus negatively on Muslims

Senior civil servants warned ministers that if they ordered a public inquiry into the July 7 suicide bombings it could "focus negatively" on Britain's Muslim community, it can be revealed.

It seems that the 'narrow' approach of simply creating a 'narrative' of the attacks, rather than a full enquiry into the events, was recommended by senior civil servants who wanted to avoid negative publicity for the Muslim community.

The warning was delivered in a briefing paper to Charles Clarke, the then-home secretary, as he considered whether or not to launch an inquiry into the 2005 bombings, in which 52 innocent people were killed.

In the paper, Sir John Gieve, the Home Office permanent secretary, said that upsetting Muslims would be a "potential cost" of ministers agreeing to demands for a full inquiry.

Let's get this straight. Muslims carried out the 7/7 attacks. The attacks were carried out in the name of Islam. But we won't enquire into that in case people get the idea that Islam and terrorist attacks are connected in some way, and this causes people to think negatively about the Muslim commnity.

Let's see. If the attacks had been carried out by Christian fundamentalists against the 'secular West', or by Zionist fanatics against the 'anti-semitic British', or by any other group who considered they had a big enough grudge against our society to justify killing 52 innocent people, do you think there would have been a full enquiry? Of course there would. But when it's the Muslims, we pussy-foot around for fear of offending anyone.

Get this. The events of 7/7 were murder - mass murder. If you plan and execute an operation that kills 52 people who are merely going about their daily business, you should expect full and rigorous investigation, criminal sanctions and severe and lengthy punishment. I don't care who you are or what particular god you acted in the name of. And if you are a 'mainstream' member of the same faith in whose name these atrocities were carried out, and who rejects the actions of the tiny few who did them, then let's hear your condemnation loud and clear, and let's see you co-operate fully with the law in rooting out this violent minority from within your community and preventing anything like this happening again. Otherwise, the rest of us might just feel, in a small and private corner of our minds, that you don't disapprove all that much.

I'm not anti-Muslim. Far from it. I respect the right of anyone to believe what they choose, as long as that belief does not involve violence against non-believers. I want to see a society where we can all live side-by-side in peace and harmony, fully respecting each others' differences while rejoicing in our own identities. But actions like these by civil servants make it look as if we are treating Muslims as a hornets' nest that must not be disturbed or provoked, as if Muslims are in some way so special that they are above the laws that the rest of us have to obey. And, in the long run, that will do more harm to relations between Muslims and the rest of us than a rigorous and fair enquiry ever could. This kind of decision is the best recruiting sergeant the BNP could wish for.

As JuliaM puts it: "Let justice be done, though the heavens fall."

Jacqui Putnam, a survivor of the Edgware Road Tube bombing, said: "This is outrageous. It is such patronising twaddle. If anyone else in the Muslim community, or anywhere else, were to commit a murder would the Home Office say this is a reason not to investigate?"

Good Grief!

Courtesy of Al Jahom, an article by Simon Jenkins (Not every adult is a paedophile, a terrorist or a mass murderer) in The Guardian that I agree with, every word. That has to be a first.

There is now a widespread belief that the bonds of private responsibility that should tie together neighbourhoods and nations alike have eroded. This is put down to everything from the nanny state to benefit dependency, risk aversion, disrespectful youth, too much money and obsessive security. When the bossy Labour minister Ed Balls banned pictures of children in schools and vetted parents for sex crimes, the bounds of public sanity were strained. Yet no one stopped him. People muttered, "Well, you can't be too safe."

...

The public should be invited to reject the politics of fear, that sees life as a perpetual terror of what might happen and a perpetual investigation of what has. It should not be asked to regard every child as a victim and every adult a paedophile, a terrorist or a mass murderer. The government should stop spending stupid amounts of money on a security lobby now running amok through the public sector.

There is no such thing as safe. There is only safer, and safer can require the greater watchfulness that comes with taking risks, witness new theories of road safety. Removing risk lowers the protective instinct of individuals and communities, and paradoxically leaves them in greater danger. But there is no government agency charged with averting that danger. There is no money in it.

Go and read it. It should be required reading for our new coalition government, too. Light is dawning in all sorts of unexpected places. Perhaps it's the good weather.