Deja vu................... the feeling that you have lived through an experience before, was never as strong as it was for me last Saturday, as I sat soaking wet in my car. Having spent the previous 4 hours standing in the rain and mud that is a British Summer, watching my 9 year old son's soccer team, loose 4 consecutive games , I now sat with him in sodden clothes listening to the radio as patchy news came through reporting a terrorist attack on another major British city, this time Glasgow, Scotland.

With for me, chilling similarities to 2 years before when I had been sat in a car in France on Holiday, trying to piece together exactly what had happened in the 7/7 London bombings, I now listened to the news reader explaining that there had a been an incident involving a bomb, which had been targeted at the British transport system, specifically Glasgow Airports main terminal. My son fidgeted, the rain trickling down his back, in the seat next to me, bored by dad listening to “some political stuff on the radio”, and I sat there, as I had 2 years ago, glued to the reports, trying to untangle the supposition of the so called “experts”, from the facts that we the public are allowed to know.

Just like 7/7 there had be many warnings from the Government and the security services that there was a continued and real threat to the UK , and most realists had acknowledged, albeit privately, that it wasn't a case of if an attack happened but when. Plots like that of Dhiren Barot's to detonate car bombs in underground car parks in London, and Omar Kyham's fertilizer plans to bomb the Bluewater shopping mall and the Ministry of Sound nightclub had been thwarted by the Security services and widely reported in the press in the pre-ceding months, so when 2 car bombs were made safe in London the day before the Glasgow attack last weekend, it was of little surprise that terrorists used a similar modus operandi against a Scottish transport target, notably just 4 days after Gordon Brown had taken office as the first Scottish Prime Minister for 44 years. When Mr Brown, during his maiden speech as Prime Minister proclaimed “Let the work of change begin” I don't think he necessarily expected the Jihadists to take the meaning quite so literally.

I almost felt sorry for Brown and his cohorts, having to deal with this weeks terrorist events so soon after taking their new cabinet roles, and then I remembered that these are the very idiots who didn't stop Tony Blair bombing Iraqi........is it just coincidence that one of the Glasgow Bombers that was charged last night was an Iraqi Doctor? .....well who knows but the anti war lobby will surely be crying “what goes around comes around”.

So, have we learnt anything since the London bombings ?

It is 2 years ago to the day that 56 people lost their lives, and hundreds of people lost sisters, brothers, husbands and wives when London was bombed by 4 British Muslims. A teaching assistant, a gifted cricketer, a market stall trader, a college student.......this could so easily be a list of the victims, but its not, these are the young men who hand detonated the 4 bombs that ripped through the London underground and bus network during the morning rush hour on Thursday 7th July 2005. Like the 4 7/7 bombers initial reports suggest that the most recent threat has come from fully integrated members of society, who lived and worked amongst their intended victims. Once again the seemingly indiscriminate nature of the attacks has caused Brits living in major conurbations to re-consider how safe we really are, and how we can ever protect ourselves from elements of society that look, sound and act like the rest of us.

For the 1st time in my life, on Monday as I crossed the Severn Bridge from England to Wales, a journey I do every week, I noticed that the guy in the toll booth was checking to see what I had on the rear seat of my car, and yesterday at the local Shopping mall I noticed it's now surrounded by temporary concrete blast walls, and is being patrolled by policemen with semi automatic weapons, something which is as rare in England as my sons soccer team scoring a goal. Even at the height of the Irish Republican terrorist threat to the British Mainland, I didn't get any where near the same feeling of concern as I do about the current threat. Yes, I'm older and have my own family now, and yes I do understand a little more of the terrorist psyche, but ultimately what worries me isn't the terrorists, its the response of the average man.
The average Brit simply doesn't comprehend how important the threat we face is , and doesn't consider how impossible a task it is for any national security service to monitor every splintered faction that they believe have been inspired by the attacks in the name of Al Qaeda, let alone the unknown sleepers who are living amongst us waiting for a call.

Your average stiff upper lipped Brit is deeply shocked by a blazing jeep begin driven into an airport terminal or news that a car bomb packed with nails was parked outside a London Nightclub with a second device a few hundred yards away with the intention of causing mass injury to those feeling from the first blast, but these “Englishmen” and their wives are often the very same people who have never made an effort to understand the religions and cultures that have become part of the UK over the last 50 years. Don't get me wrong they are not overtly racist and would never dare to cause offence...after all were British! But the same people perpetuate myths about how ”others lead there lives”, with quite frankly never asking a Muslim or any other follower of faith what is important to them and understanding the morality of their lives.

Perhaps if a few more people took the time to re-evaluate what has made Britain Great they would be shocked to see that much of what we think of as being British is in fact borrowed from around the world, and that following some of the the morals of the non Christian faiths might allow them to be a little more accepting of others. Yes we can blunder around the globe, trying to impose our way on the world, but ultimately your on a hiding to nothing if you don't even know who your real enemies are.

So until next time, from the bottom corner of the little island to your right, I ask you to keep England in your prayers. For until there is a wholesale change in the way the Brits conduct ourselves at home and abroad I fear that there will be more bombs and more feelings of Deja Vu for me and my rain soaked son.