Infidels

What can we do about the latest batch of terrorist murderers? Not much more than we are doing already, unfortunately. It just isn't possible to infiltrate every cell with spies and informers even if you could get people to do a job which would be certain to get them killed eventually, because there is no head office. There is no central command.

I came within two minutes of being blown to bits by an IRA bomb years ago because I was standing right next to it just before it went off. At least with the IRA they often gave warnings, and as far as I remember they did not have members so committed to the cause that they were willing to die with the rest of their victims.

I know it isn't much of a comfort to know that we are far more likely to die in a car crash than be killed by a fanatic, but car crashes are not outrages and random attacks are just as unpredictable as accidents.

I heard someone describe suicidal terrorists as 'deranged' today. This may seem like an understatement, but I really think it is the only word that can be used. They are not clinically insane, so they cannot be cured.

A very distant second-place in my sympathy for these acts of barbarity (the victim's families being the first) goes to the true followers of Islam, not the fascistic, male upholders of Sharia law.

Henry the Eighth unwittingly did us a great service when he created the Church of England and sidelined the English clergy from law and global politics. Politics and religion don't mix without ghastly consequences - like the Crusades in the Holy Lands.

I miss the inconsequential, hapless, bumbling vicar of old - even the hunting, shooting and fishing ones. They didn't do a great deal of harm.