{"id":181,"date":"2005-07-21T15:29:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-21T15:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/wordpress\/?p=181"},"modified":"2010-01-09T16:51:49","modified_gmt":"2010-01-09T16:51:49","slug":"whats-with-all-this-we-stuff-a-poor-excuse-for-a-thinkpiece-but-mercifully-shorter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/2005\/07\/whats-with-all-this-we-stuff-a-poor-excuse-for-a-thinkpiece-but-mercifully-shorter.html","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s with all this &#8220;we&#8221; stuff? (A poor excuse for a thinkpiece, but mercifully shorter.)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"justify\">Two weeks ago we were getting bombed in London.  One week ago we were asked for two minutes&#8217; silence to remember, in case momentous events from the previous week had slipped our minds.  Today <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/uk\/4705117.stm\">someone did the reminding for us<\/a>.  I don&#8217;t know if we were lucky to have avoided death and destruction today, or unlucky to have copped it on the 7th.  <\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">I&#8217;ve been asked if the possibility of attacks like this happening had crossed my mind when I decided to move to London.  In fact, I had considered the risk of coming to grief on London public transport, but my fears were based on <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/uk\/4692813.stm\">self-inflicted mayhem<\/a> rather than terrorists.<\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">People keep talking about the meticulous planning that went into the bomb attacks earlier this month, but I&#8217;ve only heard one pundit on the radio so far asking what I&#8217;ve been wondering: just how organised do you have to be to turn up at a railway station with three of your mates at the same time?  All travelling down together from Leeds in the same car doesn&#8217;t exactly sound like a logistical nightmare.<\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">In other words, contrary to what we may sometimes think, these are not criminal masterminds directed by a nehru-jacketed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.samizdata.net\/blog\/archives\/002348.html\">evil genius listening to classical music<\/a> in his well-appointed underground lair.<\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">Apparently, American hacks with deadlines have been banging on about the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/printables\/talk\/050725ta_talk_gopnik\">preternatural calm and a long-considered certainty<\/a>&#8221; evinced by Londoners, in contrast to New Yorkers in the World Trade Centre attacks; although I don&#8217;t remember seeing any Manhattanites on TV running around in circles waving their hands in the air.  On the other hand, no-one has seemed to notice that, unlike the Americans, British TV did not respond to tragedy by showing lots of waving flags and playing patriotic music.<\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">There has also been a notable absence of Samuel Barber&#8217;s <em>Adagio for Strings<\/em> accompanying TV news montages, which is refreshing.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two weeks ago we were getting bombed in London. One week ago we were asked for two minutes&#8217; silence to remember, in case momentous events from the previous week had slipped our minds. Today someone did the reminding for us. I don&#8217;t know if we were lucky to have avoided death and destruction today, or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3447,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions\/3447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}