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Depsite that we're going through a period in human history where any claim of a god like figure should seem more futile than ever, public atrocities in the name of religion have started to creep back across Europe.
Earlier tonight, another set of thick fucks have gone about a major city centre (Vienna) with guns resulting in at least one death. As I type this, it hasn't officially been confirmed as religious extremism, but there have been at least a couple now in the space of a month so let's assume for arguments sake that it is.
I have worked in Manchester City Centre for almost three years. In that time, there have been several instances where shit has gone down, i.e. a person has attacked random shoppers, suspicious packages have been investigated, buildings have been evacuated because Police have good reason to suspect a person plotting something or other. In each case it basically got tidied up by the police, nobody died, and there was very little news coverage apart from that old "arrested and sectioned under the mental health act" chestnut.
For a good while, I was wondering is it only a matter of time before there's another May 22nd or something even worse. Then along came Covid, and it seemed like the world was ending anyway so why would anybody go to the trouble, but clearly there are people still out there who are into this shit.
And even though the virus is killing mass amounts more people than this level of terrorism is ever going to, I can't help finding this scarier. I would be devastated if anyone close to me contracted Covid-19 and died as a result, but I could at least console myself on the basis that viruses are a part of daily life that we have to accept as much as we try to avoid or eradicate. A random killing at the hands of a religious nutjob though is something I'm not sure I'd ever get over.
But what I'm interested to know is how comfortable do we generally feel that the UK is relatively safe from all this for the moment? Maybe people are sure it's just round the corner but with everything else going on, it's just a minor concern in the back of everyone's mind?
Earlier tonight, another set of thick fucks have gone about a major city centre (Vienna) with guns resulting in at least one death. As I type this, it hasn't officially been confirmed as religious extremism, but there have been at least a couple now in the space of a month so let's assume for arguments sake that it is.
I have worked in Manchester City Centre for almost three years. In that time, there have been several instances where shit has gone down, i.e. a person has attacked random shoppers, suspicious packages have been investigated, buildings have been evacuated because Police have good reason to suspect a person plotting something or other. In each case it basically got tidied up by the police, nobody died, and there was very little news coverage apart from that old "arrested and sectioned under the mental health act" chestnut.
For a good while, I was wondering is it only a matter of time before there's another May 22nd or something even worse. Then along came Covid, and it seemed like the world was ending anyway so why would anybody go to the trouble, but clearly there are people still out there who are into this shit.
And even though the virus is killing mass amounts more people than this level of terrorism is ever going to, I can't help finding this scarier. I would be devastated if anyone close to me contracted Covid-19 and died as a result, but I could at least console myself on the basis that viruses are a part of daily life that we have to accept as much as we try to avoid or eradicate. A random killing at the hands of a religious nutjob though is something I'm not sure I'd ever get over.
But what I'm interested to know is how comfortable do we generally feel that the UK is relatively safe from all this for the moment? Maybe people are sure it's just round the corner but with everything else going on, it's just a minor concern in the back of everyone's mind?
