Carry On as Normal

I had another of those moments today, when I misconstrue something I've half heard on TV or the radio.  This time, having tuned into the radio part way through a news broadcast, I was left thinking that yesterdays terror attack ion Westminster had been carried out by Masood from Eastenders.  What else was I supposed to think, having just heard that a middle aged British Asian bloke called Masood was the slain terrorist?  The more I thought about it, the more I thought that Eastenders had missed a great story opportunity - when Masood left to go to Pakistan, they should have brought him back after a few months, radicalised and a Jihadi.  Ideally, when that bus crashed into the market recently, they should have revealed that the driver was the newly radicalised Masood.  I mean, it would have been an incredibly topical plot line, ripped from the headlines and examining the issues of the day: Islamic terror, radicalism and playing to the Daily Mail crowd by providing tem with another negative Muslim stereotype.  I know, I know, we shouldn't joke about terror attacks, especially barely twenty four hours after they've taken place - but what the Hell.  I'm tired hearing the same old platitudes being trotted out by our politicians and journalists in the wake of the attacks.

I mean, today, for instance, we had to endure hours of MPs standing up in the Commons and agreeing with one another as they went on about the 'resiliance' of the British people and so on.  Which is all very well, but it doesn't actually move us forward.  Moreover, we had the media trotting out the usual stuff about how people were refusing to be cowed by the terrorists, getting back to their everyday lives as quickly as possible.  The truth, of course, is that it has little to do with defying terrorists - the fact is that the majority of people have no choice but to return to normal: they have bills to pay which means they have to go back to work to earn the money to pay them.  Indeed, the only time people don't return to their usual business after a terror attack is when the authorities prevent them from doing so, by imposing states of emergency, closing down public transport and restricting travel.

Obviously, I'd never exploit a terrorist outrage to try and drive traffic to The Sleaze, but just got this idea for a story and found that I had to write it.  I hadn't planned on posting anything on The Sleaze this week, but it was an opportunity I couldn't ignore: the chance to go back to basics and come up with a story on the fly that took the site back to the good old days when we just ignored good taste and went for the jugular in satire terms.  And you know something? It worked. Obviously, Google did its best to ignore the story, burying it as deep in the search results as it could, it is amazing how much traffic you can get from Bing with a topical story and the right title and keywords. I know, I should be ashamed of myself.  But I'm not.  To return to the terror attack itself - it's clear that we need to be asking hard questions about security measures at the Palace of Westminster.  After all, an armed man gets onto the premises, but Michael Gove and Michael Fallon are left unscathed?  What were the police thinking?  They should have been pointing them out to the terrorist.  (For the benefit of any reactionaries or members of the establishment who might be reading this, I'm not advocating the murder of Tory MPs, this is merely for satirical purpose).