7/7 Inquiry

Submitted by Matt Murrell on 30th March 2006

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From the Guardian: "MPs have concluded that the intelligence and security services could not be blamed for failing to prevent the July 7 attacks, it was reported today." Hardly surprising; the whole point of government inquiries is to clear the establishment of any blame. At best they raise "serious questions" about their conduct, and occasionally some minor functionary is made to retire, but they never get to the heart of the issue. Hutton... Butler... the Association of Chief Police Officers inquiry into the shooting of De Menezes... and now this. The government has refused to allow an independent inquiry into the London bombings, despite pressure from various groups including survivors of the attacks. One of the those survivors, Rachel, has started a blog which details her struggle to deal with what happened, as well as the struggle of many survivors to get answers about that tragic event: http://rachelnorthlondon.blogspot.com/

380 reads

joynyangreen

30 March 2006 - 2:08pm

cheers for the link matt. any organisation that investigates itself is always careful to draw the frames of reference so that the findings won't inconvenience those at the top too much. the hutton inquiry was stunning example of this. who is to blame for taking the country to war on a false prospectus? no that's not the important issue. the important issue is that the quality of one bbc news report was not quite up to scratch. and they wonder why everyone has become so cynical..

MrSteve

30 March 2006 - 2:23pm

It is not surprising the Inquiries had such a narrow scope, given the subsequent memo revelations! I think there is already enough evidence in the memos that have been leaked to warrant an investigation by the ICC.

Randon

30 March 2006 - 3:25pm

They can have all the inquiries they want. At the end of the day they take us into a war based on false intelligence information which apparently was detailed and extensive and yet they had no evidence of an attack in our own country. Question is what the hell are they doing? I think they must sit at a desk playing with themselves all day then make something up in the last half hour that looks good. The state of the intelligence services in this country is shameful, for God sakes we talk to rocks in the middle of Moscow and expect no one to notice. Boggles the mind. One thing we must have though is a proper investigation and some real action on the unlawful killing of De Menezes. The entire operation was unacceptable, and Ian Blair clearly lied to the public following the events. The level of incompetance shown by that man is staggering, he must have more of a relation to Tony than his last name because any half decent PM would have at least used him as a fall guy by now whether or not he'd cocked up. Plus the fact they both avid fans of lying through their teeth.

Joe.Bloggs

2 April 2006 - 8:48am

Matt, Just wondering, we all know how 9/11 is month first, then day, what is 7/7? Is it month or day first? Your quote suggests that the month is first (keeping with the original US style of 9/11), but I would have thought the Brits would keep the day first for two reasons: You're not completely backwards (despite Jays continual assertions to the contrary), and that you would do it simply to distance yourself from anything american. Can you please help me with this?

Matt Murrell

2 April 2006 - 12:39pm

Charles, 7/7 refers to the 7th of July, as the British system always has the day first, followed by the month. It's perfectly acceptable to talk of July 7th (March 3rd for example), but the date is always officially written "day / month / year". However, most of the media seem to refer to the attack on the Twin Towers as "9/11", which technically is the 9th of November, rather than "11/9" which is the correct way of putting it...

Joe.Bloggs

2 April 2006 - 10:10pm

Matt, As an Australian, I am well aware of how we write the date. It seems that my humour was (for some unknown and never-likely-to-be-repeated reason) too subtle. Back to the drawing board...

englishman

2 April 2006 - 10:54pm

Sorry Charles. Too subtle for me.