None Of The Below - The UK Parliamentary Election, Questions for Candidates

Less than a month to the election and to date I've received two leaflets from the Conservative Party and nothing from any of the other 4 candidates, but that may be due to the leaflets not yet having been printed as the deadline for candidates to announce their standing was only yesterday. The Parliamentary seat I live in is a marginal; in the last 4 elections, two have been won by Labour and two by Conservative. Currently it's number 46 on the Labour target list, which they would need to win a majority at the election. So there's very definitely something to play for in this seat. Yet I suspect the odd leaflet aside, as for the past 4 elections I will not see hair nor hide of any Party court my vote in person. I work part-time, so it's not even a case that I am always out when the canvassers are on the trail. No, this is just the faceless nature of UK politics in the twenty-first century. I've had more visits across the years from jehovah's Witnesses than Parliamentary party candidates. And this is in a competitive seat remember...

So I'm just going to offer you the questions I would pose each candidate from the 5 standing parties were they actually to show their face. I am not going to offer their responses, if they want, their parties or supporters can respond in the comments section. For the purposes of this exercise, I'm not going to proceed along my belief that the election result is a foregone conclusion.

Conservatives

When did you cease being a progressive party? Everything about you is reactionary. It's as if you yearn for a return to a vision of 1950s Britain, certainly your leader seems to come from that age (which is odd as she was only 4 years old when the sixties commenced). Mrs Thatcher was a reaction to the politics and freedoms of the 1960s (as was Ronald Reagan in the US). May seems to be a reaction to 1970s Britain, which no longer exits (not even in Labour Party leader's Jeremy Corbyn's vision for Britain), yet that is the picture the Conservatives are painting of the current Labour leadership. I see no progressive policies or aspirations, other than a vague notion of Britain getting its identity back once Brexit is concluded. But can you define what that identity actually is? The notion of a singular identity in our culturally diverse 21st century nation is obsolescent. Former Conservative Prime Minister John Major's appeal for a return to 'Family Values' was an unmitigated disaster and contributed to his defeat & the Conservatives' exile during the Blair years, partly because no one could define Family Values and moral hypocrisy by Conservative MPs undermined any possible notion of it being instituted.

So what apart from an all out assault on the Welfare State, the NHS, and a reinstitution of selective education do you stand for? A reaction to the post-1945 Labout government which set up the modern Britain in other words. All under your mantra of balancing the books, instead of going after corporations and rich individuals who are not paying their fair share of tax. I think part of the reason for that is you don't want to drive such 'patriots' into tax exile, just in case Brexit turns out to be a disaster for the economy, so your sole response will be to set Britain up as a tax haven, so you need these people to stay onside in the interim.

Labour

 You know Jeremy Corbyn's policies such as nuclear disarmament, greater equality of pay, certain re-nationalisations of  some failing industries such as rail and energy provision, are ones I could fall into line with very easily. However there is no way I could bring myself to back a man who has palpably shown no leadership qualities and surrounds himself with political cronies of no ability whatsoever, such as John McDonnell and Diane Abbot who hold shadow cabinet briefs in two of the most important positions, the Treasury and Home Office. No matter how visionary (or not) you are, without a great slice of political nous and the powers to persuade not your core voters, but those who are in two minds, your ideas will not take the day. Corbyn showed a complete lack of leadership during the Brexit referendum, Now I understand why Corbyn did this, after the disastrous consequences of the Scottish Independence referendum campaign, where Labour were slaughtered by their supporters for appearing on the same platforms as Conservatives, Corbyn didn't want to be seen making the same mistake for the Brexit vote. But it was a miscalculation; Labour voters were left without any rallying point, allowing UKIP to turn some of them and once you've made such a drastic move once, it's not so difficult a second and third time. Finally, his commitment to allies has seen a lamentable failure to deal with anti-Semitism within some parts of the party, his support of Ken Livingstone being testament to that. Labour has failed to either appreciate, or make clear the differences between anti-Zionism and anti-semitism. In doing so, it has managed to alienate one of its steadfast support bases of London Jews who are split down the middle as to their current disposition.

So much for political praxis, what about the ideals of this visionary? In some ways the Conservative Press is right, that the programme is an echo of where Britain stood in the 1970s, which after all was the crucible from which Corbyn's ideas were formed in the field of local politics. So far from revolutionary, Labour too seem to be reactionary and hanker after a past golden age. They want to, not unreasonably in many cases, turn back many of the Conservative policies from the 80s and last seven years. But there is not much forward thinking behind these declarations of intent. I also suspect that the manifesto represents a fairly watered down version of Corbyn's true political vision, which in itself is not a criticism, since it does at least nod its head to the art of the possible and appreciating that winning power first is a key requisite to any radical change. Is Corbyn anti-capitalism? I suspect he is, and his right hand man John McDonnell is a confessed anti-capitalist Marxist. But this manifesto seeks to work within capitalist free market, merely filing off some of its rougher burs. This cuts against Corbyn's impassioned ideals and echoes so much of the failed last campaign of Ed Miliband. I see very little difference between the two and it didn't exactly go well last time round now did it?

Liberal Democrats

What do you actually stand for? The oft asked question of many recent elections. An anachronism, a vestige of a once proud party in the nineteenth century that provided us statesmen like Gladstone and Lloyd-George. Historically the Liberal Party was a rigorous free trade/ free market party, a role subsumed by today's Conservatives. Around the turn of the twentieth century, the definition of Liberalism changed; no longer freedom to do such and such, but freedom from being prevented to be able to do such and such. That is it became reactionary, defending and upholding rights that were under threat. A vital function, but one that has been unable to sustain them as a meaningful party of power. So much so that they jumped into bed with the ideological antipodes of the Conservatives in 2010 to form a coalition, in which their only claim was that they managed to shave off some of the rougher burs of socially punishing austerity measures. The party of putting your finger in the dyke to hold back the flood...

But now as they look to rebuild after their massacre for joining up with the Conservatives, they have eked out a genuine position, the only one of the three parties to commit to reversing the Brexit decision. A reactionary position disguised as a radical one. They want a return to the status quo previous to June 2016. I was a Remainer. I would never vote Liberal on that one policy. First the people have spoken, however misguidedly I credit it to be and it is fundamentally undemocratic to go against their popular will formally expressed in a ballot. Many other feel like me, or just accept that we've got to get on with Brexit and so the numbers do not stack up for the Liberals in their calculations. What else do they stand for? I couldn't tell you and even if I could, their recent record is they could tear it up in an instant if they make a similar political calculation to participate in power sharing through a coalition. Besides, it's never sharing, and the junior partner always gets punished in the following election - either your claimed strength for moderating the majority party's nastier ideas is taken as interfering and preventing the business of strong government, or people just think why vote Liberal, we may as well vote Conservative and get a proper government rather than a half-baked coalition, which is exactly what happened in 2015.

Green Party

I almost voted Green in the last election and in a way they most closely match my personal vision of society. except, like Labour I'm not quite sure how much they do. Are they a fully anti-capitalist party, which in truth is really the only way a genuine environmentalist party can be, or are they plying a gradual transformation to build up support? A genuinely Green economy would be so radical a shift from our current state of affairs, it would be a revolution of values, of employment, of well economy. Have they articulated that end point of their vision at all, let alone the manner of the transition to that? No, is the answer.

UK Independence Party
(They're not getting their party logo, I despise them so).
Now that Brexit has been secured, with the two main parties committed to delivering it, what reason do you have for even existing? None. Your spurious claim that you are needed to steer through a satisfactory vision of Brexit is a) subsumed by the Conservatives who can act without concern for your views and b) would you then just fade away after Brexit is complete in March 2019, no of course you wouldn't, cos unlike the outsider politicians you claim to be, you still lust after hanging on to what moderate power and influence you wield.

This purposelessness is doubly so in London, which being a cosmopolitan, diverse, outward facing city, has consistently rejected your inward, homogenous, chauvinistic values. Then there are the personal beliefs of your leader, who baldly states that the NHS should be privatised, that climate change does not exist, that the endemic sexism expressed by former (ie "sacked) members of the party is also shared by your glorious leader.

So, there you have it, the sort of discussion I might engage in with any party candidate were they to show up at my door. If they did, do you think they'd engage me in a debate of these points? No, me neither. They just want to tick or cross your name on their voting intention list. They're not going to devote/waste twenty minutes it would take to even skirt these issues. Even Jehovah's Witnesses will take the time to engage me in discussion of their beliefs for twenty minutes (in fact it's hard to break off debate with them, but that's my fault for engaging with them in the first place)> So I will most likely spoil my ballot paper by writing "none of the above" across it.

*

Political theory in 153 words blog post

Homegrown Suicide Bomber- Sample

From my book "Not In My name" published 2011 - part 2, the new politics is being waged online where it is far more vicious and bloody...

"Blog: 17th May 2006 / 27th Rabia Awal 1427

Another- the last- fitting for my nuptial dress. Has me more than a little nervous. Only natural of course. My fingers are trembling and I can’t do up a single clasp. The seamstress clicks her tongue in sharp disapproval and says such conduct would be unbecoming on the big day itself. The girdle feels tight, even though I have barely eaten this last week, despite cautioning from those around me to maintain my strength. I have even surrendered up my beloved gelatis. But today I feel I can treat myself to a bombe glacée. A last trifling indulgence, before the most profound change occurs in my life. And if I spread a couple of inches under its calorific assault, then I’ll just have to suck in my stomach, which with the likely state of my breathing tomorrow, shouldn’t be too hard a task. I force myself to think pure thoughts by envisioning my betrothed before me, as the seamstress gingerly packs up my raiment. And in conjuring such happy thoughts, a smile breaks out to envelop the worry lines around my pensive brow. Now my lips quiver only with joy. Such a remedy never fails. Tomorrow we shall be conjoined for ever. I leave the premises to search out my ice cream, once I have safely stored the vestments. Now it is just a question of killing time.

*

With all the trepidation, it’s been a very long and sleepless night. As the light faded, my thoughts flared around me, projected into the formless shadows moving on the wall. Car headlights seared their way through my shutters and churned and roiled my ceiling, making me dizzy and disoriented. Shutting my eyes did nothing, as they managed to prise through the membranes of my eyelids. How thin and insubstantial all of my body feels at this time. My flesh a flimsy curtain, partitioning the unknown chambers ahead.

I rose from bed and am now carving this for the want of something to do. Of course they left me no means of communicating with the outside world. But they did leave me a knife for self-protection and when I had blunted that, I used the flints sheared off from the stone walls of the room itself. Had other brides and grooms to be, been put up here before me? Then the building will tell its tale as well as my own.

My overriding thought right now, would to please be permitted some sleep, so I am not too befuddled for tomorr- or later today as it now is. I’m going back to bed, doubtless to joust some more with my ceiling-borne demons overhead. Whence death seemingly always comes, in our insignificant part of the world. Where the sky is forever falling in.

*

A pealing siren outside woke me, even though it was far away in the distance. A presentiment of ill-fortune? But again I just marinade my mind with thoughts of my beloved opening his arms in welcome and all such anxieties melt away and me with it back into my furtive dreams. Wherein my Mother soon intercedes. Bustling and barging the angelic bystanders as she cuts a direct path to me. Standing now right in my face, eclipsing even the joy of my light, for she would not approve of such an espousal. This is not exactly an elopement, yet still she cannot know till after the event. I have recorded her a message to explain the matter. But her forceful image has demanded an explanation of me before she is even in the know. A lingering last vestige of guilt.

Mother, the sole message is I love you. Even as I seemingly repudiate you by this act. I am not propelling myself away from you. This you must understand. How I love you more than anything else on this earth and I am beaming this message to you, with greater force than all the generative force soon to adorn my belly, that will pull us apart merely on this plane. In my absence, you will receive only greater honour. Till we are ultimately reconciled in Paradise. My Mother and I hug, seemingly unconditionally as she did when I was a baby. And finally I fall into a dreamless sleep.

18th May 2006 / 28th Rabia Awal 1427

I imagine hearing another siren, but as I groggily come round, I realise it is my beeping alarm clock. An adhan summoning me to my calling. My salvation. I shut it off. I’ll be present at my union soon enough. Lying here, I try and evoke an image of the light of my life in the future, but nothing comes. It’s as if my thoughts are like birds, flying in confusion and without navigation during an eclipse, as my rapidly beating heart has blotted out the sun. So I do what I’ve been steeled to do and I use it to my advantage. I am to enter the core of this black sun, and ball it up in my hand. Driving the fingers till they seal my palm. Thereby readmitting the light to embrace me once again. Ha, already the quickened pulse recedes. Resumes its orderly place in the background. But do not be fooled. That faint tick, tick, ticking, is the sound of my seething heart, walled up behind the thorns and briars of my sin. How they dam up my heart from God. Now is the time to purge them like an infernal machine, back whence they came. Return my pure being back to the bosom of God. For He cannot be contained. My heart is fit to irrupt, its furious palpitations cannot be accommodated a moment longer.

I swing my legs out of bed. My bare feet meet the cold stone of the flags. All the more felicitous then, since a grave will be yet colder. I wash myself from a bowl of water, letting the precious liquid trickle back down to its source. Our adversaries would deny us even this most basic of elements. As I bathe them, I devote each one of the two hundred bones in my body to you my Love. And by my actions, I imagine we will share them in turn with five times that amount of suitors, dispersed like passing out wedges of wedding cake. Spearing into their trespassing hearts, as we entwine and are yoked together into death. Then there is the added confetti of nails and ball bearings, only this time it will be the bride showering the congregation. Even my virginal veil of modesty shall be aflame and sail through the air combusting all it brushes against. My flying blood will baste their foreheads with the indelible sign of their guilt. The liquid in the bowl is still once again.

I hope my laving is suitably thorough, but I am without any mirror for inspection. One isn’t to wake on the morn of one’s self-appointed expiration and glimpse dread in the eyes. No photos to kiss either, no earthly tugs at all to corrode the will. To blunt my whetted mind. Instead I picture weaving my own carpet. I who have nothing, can still donate this wedding gift. As they deny us the wool because we have no land to breed sheep and we have no looms to spin it within our flimsy, cramped houses, so then will I fashion mine from blood and bone. I aim to weave the largest rug that is humanly possible from my frame, to drape the entire tarmac between two bus stops. And my signature, will be my essence mingled in with theirs. They who are so precious about collecting and burying every last drop of their blood spilt, will not be able to determine if it is mine or theirs. Blotting me up with their paper as they do with their own. How they will waste such resources in taking precise, forensic care of my remains, it will almost be like they are forced to yield me the same worth as their own burnt offerings. But for all this, I will yield them no insights. Other than reinforcing that which they choose to remain wilfully blind to.

I’m ready. This time I rig myself with barely a faltering in my fingers. The clasps all snap home. The girdle still feels tight, but now hangs heavy, arrayed with the wedding gifts lavished last night by my escort. What a most generous gift he has seen fit to bestow upon me. The needles to unstitch with. The pattern in my mind. At last, for the first time in our despoiled land, my belly feels fecund.

19th May 2006

20th May 2006

21st May 2006

Gone

The requested resource

/

is no longer available on this server and there is no forwarding address. Please remove all references to this resource."

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Homegrown Bombers - Sunday Sample

From my book "Not In My name" published 2011 - part 2, the new politics is being waged online where it is far more vicious and bloody...

"Joe Bloggs’ Blog, London, July 8th 2006

The view from the top of the Clapham Omnibus

A year to the day. Plus one. In order to honour the memorial ceremonies passing off with due dignity.

But I can hold my peace no longer. Today I can ask the question, was that it??? A one-hit wonder? Is that the sum total, one atrocity?

Admittedly well-planned and co-ordinated, but where’s the sustained follow-up campaign? Apart from the four stooges who couldn’t even make a chapati, much less a bomb. And didn’t one of them, possessed with the courage of a lion, make his bolt by draping himself head to foot in a burka? How double-edged does the veil seem now?

It’s a bit of a well-worn tradition apparently. For I’m told as much as protecting female modesty, the veil can also help a vulpine lover secure access, to his off-limits but willing love in the harem.

Still, how we were all gripped by the thrill of the chase for a couple of weeks. CCTV footage of them plastered everywhere, rivalling a bad taste Benetton campaign. Blanket media coverage, till they were being led away under blankets. Extradited, locked up and forgotten about. News blackout.

About time they were coming to trial I’d say. How much more evidence do we need to gather? Caught red handed on camera. Up in the dock, so we can all see you for the pathetic specimens you really are! You’re nothing! We can’t even recall your names. Your prolix, unBritish sounding names, more verbose than any meaningful ideology you care to spout.

And, undaunted we’re still using the Underground aren’t we? Our wheels of commerce grind on. The fear and anxiety have diminished, cos you haven’t been able to repeat your heinous deed. Of course not, your top boys took themselves out in their one act. Your second top boys...are just languishing in our prison cells. I think you're done don't you?

So it showed that you could. Big deal. The Met Commissioner had been warning us for three years, with his mantra that it was a question of ‘when’ and not ‘if’. Well, ‘when’ has come to pass. And past. In theory the threat must still persist. But London has shrugged its broad shoulders and got on with life. We’re battle hardened, first from the Blitz, then the spud-munchers throwing blazing fertilizer at us. Such outrages only firm up our sense of community and togetherness. A sense of belonging you can’t possibly penetrate.

When all’s said and done, ultimately you were no more than a mosquito or a gnat bite. A knee-jerk into the groin. Enough to make our eyes water, but no need for an overreaction of the body politic.

Since there’s been no lasting terror beyond the one-off incident, therefore it had to have been an act of vengeful spite. A token. A hate token to the country of your birth. Not even your adoptive or foster country, but where you were born, brought up and educated. A single act of bloody bloodymindedness.

Rather than play out your destructive oedipal fantasies on our bodies, you would have been better off blubbering on a shrink’s couch, except that is rooted in the other bunch of Semite cousins you claim to abhor. Hatred is always non-negotiable. Like prejudice.

One of you only ended up on that bus cos you neglected to charge the battery. Still, how redolent was that image, with its roof ripped off like a sardine tin? Powerfully symbolic, but symptomatic of not very much at all. Except your lack of understanding of our way of life, both marooned up there in Yorkshire and holed up in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan.

Only a tired old strategy of economic dislocation, targets the transport system. But every Londoner knows any three Tube lines are out of commission on a daily basis. Signal trouble usually. The bus ought to have been your cue, seeing as it’s our culture you’re at war with anyway.

For our part, we may not be able to win a war on a word called ‘terror’. But you can triumph even less through war against a culture. Does Grozny or Gaza feel any more liberated by your act of derring-do? No, thought not.

So it remains a stifled howl. The yelp from kicking a three-legged dog. A petulant display from infantile minds. No matter how downright angry I may be after what you’ve done, I’m still civilised enough not  to be coming after your kith and kin. An eye for an eye? My eye more like. And I’ve got it trained on you."

Comments:

"I heartily concur with the sentiments expressed from the top of the Clapham Omnibus. Though I believe there is a little more behind the motivations of such men, other than petty vindictiveness. I would refer you to the dedicated network, small as it is but dispersed worldwide, as represented by a myriad of sites on the Web. Where exist hundreds of webpage bomb-making cookbooks and footage of IED (improvised explosive device) attacks from the Middle East, shot from the vantage of those pressing the remote control for the bomb. There was even, in English, a Powerpoint step-by-step presentation of how to construct a homemade device, till the URL was spiked.

So, in similar vein, I thought it about time the arsenal ranged against this network was laid out in turn. To wit, the eyes and ears of entire nations. If the requisite information can be got out, to you the public, then there stands more chance of thwarting the bombers. The Authorities want the populace to keep eyes and ears open to help in the fight against terrorism, but they don’t want you to open your mouths and question what lies behind such actions in the first place. So as with your Blog host, I can hold my peace no longer. I will furnish you with all the information you need to know. To hell with the Official Secrets Act. If they haul me over the coals for whistle blowing, so be it. At least what I have to offer will already be out in the public domain. This is what you truly call a civil service. Below are my credentials.

I am and have been for over thirty years, part of the Intelligence Services of this country. In the past, we have been all that lay between you and periodic bloody carnage throughout our sceptred isle. It started with tracking down the Angry Brigade in the 1970’s. Then outflanking both Irish Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries (in the interest of balance). Welsh Nationalist firebombers (remember them? I know, hard to credit Pembroke and Monmouth ever being more desirable for holiday homes than Tuscany and Provence). Animal liberationists, (never averse to serving up some slabs of well done human steak). Extortioners. Arsonists with delusions of grandeur and an accelerant career ladder. Those mail bombers and nail bombers, letter bombers bearing grudges and misanthrope purveyors of hate crimes. Oh and Libyans. Most were embarked on prolonged campaigns of repeated outrages, that it was our duty to stop dead in their tracks.

We operated from the painstaking reconstruction of each and every device, plus a consideration of the psychological cues contained in the targets, to catch our perpetrators. I could tell you about the fertilizer based bombs favoured by the Boys from the Bogside, prior to their roaring trade in Czech semtex. Or the respectable middle class Angry Brigades, who would only blow up property and institutional symbols rather than target people. Even as government scientists were simultaneously devising neutron bombs that killed people, but left buildings standing. However all of this has gone out the blast shattered window here and now. Our manuals have been ripped up and used for kindling.

For the current crop of antinomian bombers are radically different. They are not pursuing a prolonged campaign. Just the one abomination is ample for their purposes. Lighting the touchpaper but not standing back, seems sufficient to pass on a flaming baton to the next disciples. Now we have to interdict them before they ever carry out the dark deed. That is made especially hard, since my superiors have not seen fit over the years, to establish much in the way of a network of contacts within these communities. To my lords and masters, most of these beardy blokes are 'clean faces'.

Made tougher still by the annealing of the present antagonists. In the past, a bomber, no matter how adept, would normally only set a device after several practice runs. And an explosion is the type of ultramundane sound, that prompts people’s recall, once it has been suggested to them that it bears a greater magnitude than a car backfiring. However, this lot either have done their training abroad and out of sight, or they just go for it hell for leather, the first and only time of asking. I believe that’s what caught out the second quartet of would be Tube bombers. They’d read their Blue Peter bomb primers, but for the want of any stickyback plastique, hadn’t been able to put it into any practice. Thank God.

Nor is their psychology the same. Most bombers bear a signature hallmark in their make up, as to why they have particularly embraced the destructive power of explosives. Some may revel in the intricacies of their constructions, the timers, trip switches and detonators. They may even want their bombs to be discovered rather than detonate, so they can pit their fiendish wits with our expert disposalists. Others may get their charge, if you’ll excuse the pun, from enchaining the elemental force of the big bang itself. The red hot wind that for a brief moment, expels and purges the very air itself. Before the devastation comes cascading back to earth. Collapse of stout party. The bomber as Hephaestus at his forge. Perhaps Zeus himself hurling his thunderclaps and leaving huge craters in the earth. Though obviously such association is beyond the majority of most bomb throwers. For they remain forever, third spear chucker in a lame production of a modern-day revenge tragedy.

But this clump are not interested in the finesse of their design, nor the temporary divine power it may vest them. For they willingly sacrifice themselves immediately upon such divinity and are consumed by it. They are not around to relive their handiwork in their mind’s eye, or even congratulate themselves grimly on a job well done. Ergo no signature handiwork, because it is an act never to be recreated. For them, the bomb is a means to a singular, solitary end, pure and simple. Same difference ricin, anthrax or nuclear waste. Ordination by ordnance. Unlike most bombers who have long-since skedaddled from the proposed locus of their perniciousness, these men probably do look their victims in the eyes shortly before triggering their devices. Indiscriminate, but somehow intimate. This is coffin calculus, at its simplest, most stripped down algorithm.

Having said that, like I say there are underlying factors behind the atrocities. Though I wouldn’t go quite so far as to say they constitute a body of coherent ideology. You probably all know the mantras of incitement: Palestine/ Iraq. American/ Crusader imperialism. Other hotspots around the world and corrupt, unIslamic Arab regimes. There’s a critique of Western materialism and sexual mores, with which I have a modicum of sympathy, but their solution for which I find yet more repellent. What this hodgepodge of ideas actually means, is that the diffuse network that is Al Qaeda, can inspire any local sparkplug to tap into his own motives. Like a sort of pick and mix of malcontentment. In the 1960’s Buddhist monks protested American Foreign Policy by setting themselves on fire. Something about Islam insinuates they have to make sure we combust along with them. Again, Clapham Omnibus has it about right with his positing that as a one off, they did it because they could. It has a lot in common with the goalless death dealing of Russian Nihilism of the Nineteenth Century. Just witness the current bloody insurgency in Iraq. For Shi’a and Sunni, you could almost read Hutu and Tutsi.

However, don’t for one moment believe that it has subsided on our Isles with this one isolated act. Just as a poisoner ought to arouse suspicion with the chemicals he purchases, we should all be on the lookout for bulk purchases, whether we are pharmacies, garden centres, catering suppliers or even hair salons. I don’t think it’s faintly possible to prejudice the case against the second cohort of Tube bombers, the ones who lived to face up to justice, but I can tell you that the constituents of their bombs were humble household products; hair bleach, nail polish remover and chapati flour. All the more terrible for being so mundane in their genesis. Things we utilise in our lifestyles, repackaged and spat back poisonously in our faces."

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