What a weird few days it has been – failed bomb attacks in London and Glasgow, torrential rain at the beginning of July and now smoking has been banned across the whole of the UK now that England has caught up with the rest of it.
I have to say that if I was a smoker I would be decidedly unimpressed by the ban. Smoking doesn’t generally bother, despite not being a smoker and never having been one. The only time I particularly object to it is when I am in a restaurant and someone nearby is smoking. It will be nice to go out socially and not have to think about whether I will go home smelling of smoke though.
Smoke was the least of their problems in Glasgow on Saturday of course, what with someone seemingly trying to firebomb the airport. G comes from Glasgow and G’s parents said yesterday that they knew a few people who were at the airport at the time and apparently various people were shouting at the police and telling them that they shouldn’t have put out the man who was on fire. As awful as what he was trying to do was, letting someone burn to death when you could save them doesn’t seem right to me. Even if you are totally hard line about these things then at least thinking about it from the perspective of the evidence that the person might be able to provide if it is all part of a major plot - surely it has to have been worth saving him. It just scares me a bit though that people’s gut instinct seems to have been to want someone to die. Look at it like this. A man attacks an airport and the thought in his mind is “These people don’t deserve to live, I hope they die in flames”. The man is stopped in the act but is engulfed in flames and the reaction of some of those looking on is “That man doesn’t deserve to live, I hope he dies in flames”. As much as we might like to think that we are different to those who try to perpetrate terror, maybe sometimes we’re not so different after all.
Anyway, on a lighter note I was chatting to G on Saturday and was just running through various things that I needed to mention. At one point I was explaining that I had bought some tuna when I was at the supermarket (this was going somewhere as I was going to say that I was going to make a tuna lasagne for lunch on Sunday, I wasn’t just running through my shopping list) and G just started to laugh at me and said “Sometimes you are just so random” See? Random by name, random by nature…
I have to say that if I was a smoker I would be decidedly unimpressed by the ban. Smoking doesn’t generally bother, despite not being a smoker and never having been one. The only time I particularly object to it is when I am in a restaurant and someone nearby is smoking. It will be nice to go out socially and not have to think about whether I will go home smelling of smoke though.
Smoke was the least of their problems in Glasgow on Saturday of course, what with someone seemingly trying to firebomb the airport. G comes from Glasgow and G’s parents said yesterday that they knew a few people who were at the airport at the time and apparently various people were shouting at the police and telling them that they shouldn’t have put out the man who was on fire. As awful as what he was trying to do was, letting someone burn to death when you could save them doesn’t seem right to me. Even if you are totally hard line about these things then at least thinking about it from the perspective of the evidence that the person might be able to provide if it is all part of a major plot - surely it has to have been worth saving him. It just scares me a bit though that people’s gut instinct seems to have been to want someone to die. Look at it like this. A man attacks an airport and the thought in his mind is “These people don’t deserve to live, I hope they die in flames”. The man is stopped in the act but is engulfed in flames and the reaction of some of those looking on is “That man doesn’t deserve to live, I hope he dies in flames”. As much as we might like to think that we are different to those who try to perpetrate terror, maybe sometimes we’re not so different after all.
Anyway, on a lighter note I was chatting to G on Saturday and was just running through various things that I needed to mention. At one point I was explaining that I had bought some tuna when I was at the supermarket (this was going somewhere as I was going to say that I was going to make a tuna lasagne for lunch on Sunday, I wasn’t just running through my shopping list) and G just started to laugh at me and said “Sometimes you are just so random” See? Random by name, random by nature…
3 comments:
I don't get the problem with the smoking ban. Edinburgh has had it for three years and was implemented very smoothly. Yet in Brussels everyone sparks up inside regardless. . .
"As much as we might like to think that we are different to those who try to perpetrate terror, maybe sometimes we’re not so different after all."
I think the key difference is the element of choice in this. The terrorist made a conscious decision to try and cause damage at Glasgow airport. There is no doubt in my mind that he intended to kill others.
His being on fire is a direct result of his actions. You can understand the reaction of witnesses. He wouldn't've cared about those innocents who may have been blown up or set alight by the burning car had his plot been successful...
Although, look at the other side of the coin... the point about suicide bombers is that they WANT TO DIE for their cause. So, perhaps by saving this man's life, we have done even worse by him than had he been left to perish in the flames...
DQ - I'm sure England will make it's own fair few headlines as people try to flout the ban. I guess those who don't like it could just move to Brussels.
Blue Soup - I take your points and that he (presumably) chose to take the actions that he did. I just find something very disconcerting about how people were so keen for this man to die - and that it seemed to have been their instinct to want it. There were letters in the London Paper tonight saying the same thing.
But his willingness to take the lives of anyone who happened to be unfortunate enough to be there is indeed despicable.
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