And Now For Something Completely Different

In contrast to Anne Applebaum's take on why the attempted bombings in Britain failed - that it was a superior Western culture that is winning - Richard Littlejohn from the Daily Mail says it was superior excessive bureaucracy that foiled the attempts. But also enabled them in the first place. He starts out in a humorous way, but soon becomes very angry.

Difficult to know whether to laugh or scream after the weekend of madness we've just been through. And it's not over yet, with the security level raised to 'critical' and another terrorist attack imminent.

So let's get the laughter out of the way first, something which wouldn't have been possible had the bombers succeeded and hundreds of innocent people been killed or maimed.

Mistake One as far as the jihadists were concerned was trying to set off car bombs in the West End of London. The chances of either vehicle staying put for long enough to detonate were always going to be negligible.

In Westminster, you can get ticketed at traffic lights. One of them was towed away because it was parked on a double yellow. The second was spotted by two alert paramedics attending to a paralytic drunk, a routine casualty of another quiet night under Labour's rock-around-the-clock drinking regime.

We've only seen pictures of one side of the green Mercedes in the Haymarket. From a different angle, it too may well have been clamped, awaiting the removal truck.

Then there was the folly of relying on mobile phones to spark the explosion. Apparently they made at least two failed calls. What did they expect? Have you ever tried to get a signal in Piccadilly at chucking out time?

"The car bomb you are calling may be switched off. Please try later."

At least they didn't try loading their deadly cargo into a couple of SUVs. They'd have been beaten up by the provisional wing of Friends Of The Earth before they'd had time to set the fuse.

A little black humor, only possible because the plot failed, as he points out. But then, as I mentioned, he gets angry:

Don't blame the police or the intelligence service, this is a mess made by politicians. I felt like retching when Gordon Brown sauntered on camera to announce that the safety of the British people was paramount.

Here is a man who for the past ten years has been one of the two most prominent members of a government which has turned Britain into a playground for jihadists.

Labour tore up border controls, allowing a mass influx of Islamist psychopaths from all over the globe. Radical preachers and terrorist recruiting sergeants were encouraged to settle here. They were fed and watered, handed benefits, council houses and free cars.

Two years after 9/11, Captain Hook was still given a police guard to peddle his message of hatred and murder on the streets of Finsbury Park. Omar Bakri was safely tucked up in free accommodation in Edmonton and driving a brand new people carrier paid for by the mug British taxpayer.

These were but two among tens of thousands of Muslims living among us who make no secret that they hate Western society and intend to establish an Islamic state in Britain. Yet Gordon Brown's government wasn't interested.

Those of us who had the audacity to question the folly of allowing Islamic radicalism to foment in this country in the name of 'diversity' and 'multiculturalism' were smeared as 'racists'.

The excesses of the British nanny state may have partially compensated for the complete failure of politicians to address the real problems, in other words. But how long can that luck hold? Littlejohn does not believe it will forever. The nanny state would have to get lucky every single time. The terrorists only have to succeed once.