Yesterday, Thursday July 7th 2005
Today, Friday July 8th 2005
What a contrast. Still shocked, felt really drained last night going to bed, hit the sack earlier than I have in a long time, before 11. Considering even on a work night I’m usually up until gone 1am. It was a tough day for us all.
Today we are all Londoners.
It’s absolutely terrible the news coming out of London at the moment, fatalities, hundreds wounded. Really horrible to think that I have been to most of these places many times and I can only begin to imagine what it must be like to be caught up in this.
We’ve all been glued to our computer screens here, the F5 button has taken a real pounding.
Reports are still kinda sketchy and unfortunately I don’t except the death toll of 2 to stay at that.
I decided to back the olympic bid a few months ago, but signing up on the London2012 website and today is the day, either millions of pounds spent on putting the bid together will go down the drain, or it will pay off and London will host the games.
Being a typical Brit, I’m very sceptical. We don’t get anything, except grief, from other nations, do we?
I have a sneaky feeling Paris is going to get it. Why?
Because France is, well, flawless. Or so we’re led to believe. (Unless you’re American of course)
How anybody can call these thugs protesters I’ll never know.
It’s not even 9am yet and they’re already out in force,
What exactly is walking around with a black mask on smashing car windows protesting against exactly?
Edinburgh is taking a bit of a hammering at the moment, structurally and reputationally.
After clashes between police and “protesters” (we’ll use the term lightly for now, until I’ve explained) yesterday there is now a bitter war being fought to try and place blame.
There are those who were there who are painting a picture of police brutality, as if there were thousands of people with flowers in their hair, the sun was shining and they were prancing merrily along the street, when, from out of nowhere hundreds of police officers descended upon them for no apparent reason and started to club them like seals.
Then there is the extreme right wing media, the Daily Mail and the Express in particular who are painting a complete negative of the aformentioned story, thousands of hell-bent hoodie-wearing baseball bat clutching asylum seeking gypsie teenage mothers running amok in the streets.
The BBC have as usual tried to be as far and balanced as possible and have come up with the stance that I think I can most agree with, the usual conclusion really, and it is this, thousands turn up to protest peacefully, but there is a minority that are bent on creating violence, they go on to do so, thus smearing the entire campaign.
Why on earth, days before world leaders arrive in the vicinity, would police go out of their way to attract world attention to the fact that the British are misbehaving again and they’ve had to resort to violent action to subdue them?
Why would thousands of people come to Edinburgh just to create violence in the vicinity of the area that world leaders who can influence the changes that they want, that doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Any views happily received, use the comments.
I do try to keep things on here quite high to medium brow and post as little about the celebrity culture that is slowly but surely eating the intestines of our fair country, but I had to laugh at this when I saw it on the newspaper stand this morning.
Either that dress is so tight that it has squeezed all Charlotte’s internal organs into one tightly packed sausage shape, or somebody has spent a long time in Photoshop. I believe it to be the latter.
If you have seen Charlotte Church lately then you will surely agree with me, she is nowhere near that size.
Oh Daily Star, at least you try.
Well it was back to life, back to reality yesterday.
Almost straight off a 12 hour flight and straight into my chair at work..well, almost.
We arrived back into Heathrow at 7am Sunday morning and got home at 11ish.
Nothing amazing has happened since, the pictures taken with the underwater camera that we took down with us whilst undersea walking have been developed and I collect them tonight, had them put on PhotoCD too so can put then straight on here, not sure what to expect yet, probably just bad pictures of me with a big goldfish bowl helmet on my head.
hintofsarcasm is the spiritual home of Nathan Collins, or Nate for short, a 24 year old cynic from Cardiff, Wales. More about me..
