Karim Bakhtiar's Blog

President Bush's Secret Weapon

Behind every successful world leader there lies a great speechwriter, whose masterfully choosen words resonate with the values and hopes of their nation.

In an exclusive interview with Comedy Central, Bush's main speechwriter, Harlan McCraney, provides a rare glimpse behind-the-scenes at the influences and philosophy that underpin many of President Bush's most memorable speeches.

London Terror Attacks

So, apparently there may have been terrorist incidents at London's Moorgate and Liverpool Street subway stations, and at several other locations. As someone who walks down Moorgate four times a day, and who works five minutes away from Liverpool Street Station, this is obviously of interest to me.

Just as disasters in Fox's drama series 24 always strike Los Angeles, British TV disaster dramas always show Liverpool Street station being hit. In the past few years dramas have shown it being hit by a dirty (i.e. crude nuclear) bomb, suicide bombers and chemical attacks. So a bomb in a tube is positively tame in comparison to the stuff we're been told might happen.

It will take more than a few bombs to scare Londoners. For years our city was attacked by Irish Republican bombers. Railway stations rarely have trash cans. There are signs everywhere on public transport warning for us to look out for suspect packages, and regular announcements over the public address systems warning us to be on guard.

I noticed a fire engine turning towards Liverpool Street station as I headed to work, and two fire service cars following behind, so the Emergency services were on the scene within about 10 minutes. Throughout the morning there were sirens, and the cell phone networks stopped working. At lunch time I walked along Moorgate and around Liverpool Street. To be honest, the incidents seems to be under control. There were no police or paramedics outside Moorgate subway station when I passed it as 12:45pm.  Liverpool Street was cordoned off, and police were standing around chatting. I saw a couple of ambulances rushing to the scene, but other than that it looked as though the injured had already been evacuated.

Here's some screen grabs from Sky News.