who is responsible for the London attacks?

[Gumbert]

That will solve the problem.

But yes, hopefully someday all US and British troops can return home.

sat here in leeds, this morning my freinds street/s was surrounded by 200 armed po-lice, bomb squad and army officials... Sirens blarring while 500 people were evacuated and told they couldnt enter their own homes till 5 pm.

Many of these people with children had to seek support from the community, friends and nieghbours for food and shelter because, low and behold, the thousands of puondsworth of tax payers money that was ploughed into this mornings episode wasnt used to set up decent facilities for the community members that were caught up in this....

it all adds up to the tactics of spreading hype and fear ...nevermind the mosque firebombed in Armley and the visa centre firebombed in Bradford...and bush bliar and the corporate media are milking this for all its worth...

did the same happen for Fallujah? Nope. Does the same happen for Kabul? Nope...Does the same happen for the Mothers of British soldiers being killed in Iraq? Nope... In fact Bliar refuses to engage in their, quite justified, questions...

but hey such is the price of the war on terror...the corporate bigwigs and leaders of democracy couldnt give to fucks about the death and inconvienience of us while they carve up their rocketing share prices....

motherfucker.

 

[mears]

sat here in leeds, this morning my freinds street/s was surrounded by 200 armed po-lice, bomb squad and army officials... Sirens blarring while 500 people were evacuated and told they couldnt enter their own homes till 5 pm.

Many of these people with children had to seek support from the community, friends and nieghbours for food and shelter because, low and behold, the thousands of puondsworth of tax payers money that was ploughed into this mornings episode wasnt used to set up decent facilities for the community members that were caught up in this....

it all adds up to the tactics of spreading hype and fear ...nevermind the mosque firebombed in Armley and the visa centre firebombed in Bradford...and bush bliar and the corporate media are milking this for all its worth...

did the same happen for Fallujah? Nope. Does the same happen for Kabul? Nope...Does the same happen for the Mothers of British soldiers being killed in Iraq? Nope... In fact Bliar refuses to engage in their, quite justified, questions...

but hey such is the price of the war on terror...the corporate bigwigs and leaders of democracy couldnt give to fucks about the death and inconvienience of us while they carve up their rocketing share prices....

motherfucker.

That was an amazing speech! No one forces Islamic militants to blow up themselves and innocents, they do it themselves. Islamic militants caused the situation in leeds, not the British government.

Islamic militants are the ones who started the war. Osama Bin Laden started the war back in 1998 when he delived his fatwa against America and that age old scapegoat, the Jews.

And they blow themselves up in Iraq because they know the consequences of a representaative democracy in the the heart of the Middle East.

Thank God the Brits have more spine than the Spanish. They won't be run out of Iraq or anywhere else by such thuggery.

 

[Gumbert]

i dont know why i bother but here goes...

fuck your rhetoric about the suicide bombers...cos you wouldnt give yourself the time of day to look into the circumstances of why they blew themselves up in the first place...

and... you have the audacity to say that OBL started this in the first place...sweet jesus, did you go to college and learn your cohorts history fuckwit... OBL got nicely funded by the CIA way back in the mid eighties fghting for the Mudjehadeen against the then soviet army which of course is what one of your inside the pentagon men Zibrinsky(?) is on the record as stating and there is no denial from the pentagon on this issue. THerefore, fuckwit, he was one of yours...But you neatly erase that fact by not acknowledging it...fuckin diddums

Also your moranic grasp of history which also undermines your argument is that it forgets the first gulf war, of the leaving of american troops in saudi that pissed off your blessed benefactor so much so he turned against you. That is why your man in one of the richest families related to the bushs via business is on a mission...

but this pulls the pish...

And they blow themselves up in Iraq because they know the consequences of a representaative democracy in the the heart of the Middle East.

They see it more proufoundly than you do fuckwit... Your democracy is full on tax and gain for the democractic processes of the free market, to restructure, privatise, and make iraq a perfect rolemodel for the spread of neo-liberal niceness ie share options and bonuses for all involved in haliburton! When it comes to health care, blow the fuckin public hospitals up so that they have to pay to get medical care from the american run hospitals...lock up all youth in abu graid and take photos...get clueless journos to get the sources wrong on the abuse of the quran and more die...flatten a city of 300,000 to catch the phantom zarqawi

democracy is sweet, for your burger munchers innit fuckwit...You get fat on the profits while even in your country the poor, 45 million u.s. citizens cant afford health insurance...

And whats happening in leeds, madrid and fallujah, and the minds of the suicide bombers is all sideline...distraction

your modus operandi innit. good job being well done but not entirely unnoticed... and will come back to haunt you

 

[laptop]

That was an amazing speech! No one forces Islamic militants to blow up themselves and innocents, they do it themselves. Islamic militants caused the situation in leeds, not the British government.

So - do you know where to find Leeds without consulting multimap?

Do you magically have access to the jury verdict? Have you noticed that we currently don't know whether or not the bombers might have been - for example - Italian fascists?

Fuck off. Stay fucked off. If you carry on trying to exploit what has happened to my city for your own ideological purposes you will feel the consequences.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Also your moranic grasp of history which also undermines your argument is that it forgets the first gulf war, of the leaving of american troops in saudi that pissed off your blessed benefactor so much so he turned against you.

Was that good reason to kill 3000 people in NYC?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

but this pulls the pish...
They see it more proufoundly than you do fuckwit... Your democracy is full on tax and gain for the democractic processes of the free market, to restructure, privatise, and make iraq a perfect rolemodel for the spread of neo-liberal niceness ie share options and bonuses for all involved in haliburton!

Is it better to leave middle eastern countries in the hands of wealthy despots like the Saudi royal family, or Saddam, or the Assads in Syria?

 

[TeeJay]

I get the impression that some of the north american based posters here are 'projecting' many of their preconceptions onto events over here. While some vary general points may be valid what is missed out is any real knowledge of the british asian community and culture, or the british muslim community. On another thread someone mentioned the familes of suicide bombers being rewarded - but this is in Palestine. Anyone who knows about muslims in the UK would know that the situation and attitudes here are very different. You can't just assume that what applies in one part of the 'muslim world' applies everywhere.

Another point: while a suicide attack is new on british soil there have already been various high profile suicide attacks and attempts by young british citizens. We have already had to 'soul search' about Richard Reed and the two guys who went out to Israel, and ask how they ended up going on the route they did. As far as I understand it they were inspired by radical groups and certain preachers and the idea of 'global jihad' etc. I can't see anything radically new or different about this lot, other than the choice of target, although there are still a lot of unanswered questions about how they set the whole thing up and if they were being 'run' by a higher level operative.

mears - I don't think the Spanish people really wanted to be in Iraq in the first place and they did elect a new centre-left party which had not supported the war. You call them spineless because they seem to have changed their mind. It is worth noting that they are not intimidated by continued Basque/ETA bombings and it could be argued that they didn't change their mind about Iraq but that their previous government had gone against the peoples' wishes going there in the first place.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

your modus operandi innit. good job being well done but not entirely unnoticed... and will come back to haunt you

I wonder what he means by that?

 

[Gumbert]

if your asking warmonger, its a shite reason but the fact remains he was in cohoots with the pentagon then turned on them because of their geo-political and economic gain....

forget me though, i'm doffing my cap to the good po-lice running around my streets while a i'm whipped up into a patriotic frenzy...

 

[laptop]

How can you say that? I'd say it's most likely they had outside help, quite likely from abroad, to obtain the HE and components and assemble the bombs.

I'm always suspicious of this "outside help" = "evil genius" stuff.

Someone I know well wrote a piece about a decade ago about the "evil genius" label being applied when the PIRA started using timers from video recorders in their bombs.

It's a piece of piss. "I want to make something happen in five days' time. I look around the house. Oh look, there's the video. Here's a screwdriver..."

That person is waiting for a visit from the Anti-Terrorism squad about that piece. But it remains the case that the "it's so hard" line is either a very useful lie, or a sign of the problems caused by almost all journalists being technically illiterate, or both.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

I get the impression that some of the north american based posters here are 'projecting' many of their preconceptions onto events over here. While some vary general points may be valid what is missed out is any real knowledge of the british asian community and culture, or the british muslim community. On another thread someone mentioned the familes of suicide bombers being rewarded - but this is in Palestine. Anyone who knows about muslims in the UK would know that the situation and attitudes here are very different. You can't just assume that what applies in one part of the 'muslim world' applies everywhere. .

First of all, you appear to assume that there is no muslim community in NA. Not true.

Second, I don't think we're projecting, out of some ignorance of your local conditions. Perhaps it's that we see similar attacks occuring in London, Madrid, Istanbul, etc, and we see the similarities.

I think that people of a certain mindset have a lot invested in trying to debunk the 'war on terror'. People of that mindset will therefore work to understand these recent attacks in any terms other than those that might be consistent with some sort of international campaign of terror.

Thus, you look to mistreatment of muslims in your country for exlanations, while ignoring that you have other long suffering minorities there, just as there are elsewhere, who do not take up the rhetoric of martyrdom, and take to the streets, killing innocent people, in an attempt to get redress.

It seems to me that there is a phenomenon occurring throughout the world that is tied to an increase in fundamental and radical branches of islam. It's appearing in Europe because there are significant muslim minorities there, not wholly because of historic bad treatment of muslims, but because within any large muslim community, there will be a few people who listen to what the radicals and fundamentalists are saying.

 

[Loki]

I'm always suspicious of this "outside help" = "evil genius" stuff.

Someone I know well wrote a piece about a decade ago about the "evil genius" label being applied when the PIRA started using timers from video recorders in their bombs.

It's a piece of piss. "I want to make something happen in five days' time. I look around the house. Oh look, there's the video. Here's a screwdriver..."

That person is waiting for a visit from the Anti-Terrorism squad about that piece. But it remains the case that the "it's so hard" line is either a very useful lie, or a sign of the problems caused by almost all journalists being technically illiterate, or both.

Fair enough. But this attack took a lot of sophistication. The men known to have carried it out were quite young and I'm sceptical they acquired the explosives and assembled the bombs and carried out such a coordinated attack themselves without a lot of outside support. Most likely from abroad, but then I know as much as you do.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

if your asking warmonger, its a shite reason but the fact remains he was in cohoots with the pentagon then turned on them because of their geo-political and economic gain.....

This is such a tired argument.

Yes, the US funded him back in the days of the soviet occupation of afghanistan. But that doesn't make them responisble when, twenty years later, he goes off his rocker and decides to rid the holy land of all infidels.

 

[Gumbert]

This is such a tired argument.

Yes, the US funded him back in the days of the soviet occupation of afghanistan. But that doesn't make them responisble when, twenty years later, he goes off his rocker and decides to rid the holy land of all infidels.

go forward twenty years though and it comes right back to 9/11 then Afghanistan then Iraq then Madrid then the british transport sytem and then to leeds...

bravo blowback...

 

[laptop]

The men known to have carried it out were quite young and I'm sceptical they acquired the explosives and assembled the bombs and carried out such a coordinated attack themselves without a lot of outside support. Most likely from abroad, but then I know as much as you do.

Indeed, I don't know.

And the matter of whether there's some Evil Genius is one of the defining questions for UK politics in the next week.

The problem is that technically illiterate journos will assume that there must have been an EG, because they can't imagine any normal person (their definition: read technically illiterate person) planning anything at all really.

I'm fairly sure my geeky mates and I could have put something really nasty together when we were 16 - in fact I might be alleged to have known people then who could do seriously unpleasant things on paper, but didn't have the anger and desperation to get them off paper.

And positing an Evil Genius will keep the story running and sell more papers and keep editors happy, too.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

go forward twenty years though and it comes right back to 9/11 then Afghanistan then Iraq then Madrid then the british transport sytem and then to leeds...

bravo blowback...

I can't figure out what you're saying here.

 

[Loki]

Indeed, I don't know.

And the matter of whether there's some Evil Genius is one of the defining questions for UK politics in the next week.

The problem is that technically illiterate journos will assume that there must have been an EG, because they can't imagine any normal person (their definition: read technically illiterate person) planning anything at all really.

I'm fairly sure my geeky mates and I could have put something really nasty together when we were 16 - in fact I might be alleged to have known people then who could do seriously unpleasant things on paper, but didn't have the anger and desperation to get them off paper.

And positing an Evil Genius will keep the story running and sell more papers and keep editors happy, too.

It's one thing being able to make a simple bomb - heck I've got a mate who made the odd pipe bomb as a youth (for fun I should add). But making bombs out of high explosives with synchronised timing, in complete secrecy is another thing, especially with the heightened state of alert. It's not easy to get hold of the kind of high explosives these young men had - apparantly in very large quantities too.

Also as far as I'm aware suicide bombers don't do this alone - they act in coordination with others. Who, we don't know because this cell was very well hidden, another mark of professional planning.

 

[laptop]

It's not easy to get hold of the kind of high explosives these young men had - apparantly in very large quantities too.

It is also, unfortunately, not hard to make them - and we've already had one link to a page that doesn't say how to make explosives, but does say more than enough for a bright A-level Chemistry student to work out how to make one particular substance from scarcely-controlled raw materials.

Also as far as I'm aware suicide bombers don't do this alone - they act in coordination with others. Who, we don't know because this cell was very well hidden, another mark of professional planning.

Either professional planning, or total arriving-from-left-field-ness. My whole point is that it's too soon to tell, but the "professional planning" line will predominate because it's a "better story" and because telling it doesn't require A-level Chemistry.

As I said several hours ago: "Ban A-level Chemistry now!"

It only produces clever people that People Like Us don't understand!

 

[mears]

i dont know why i bother but here goes...

fuck your rhetoric about the suicide bombers...cos you wouldnt give yourself the time of day to look into the circumstances of why they blew themselves up in the first place...

and... you have the audacity to say that OBL started this in the first place...sweet jesus, did you go to college and learn your cohorts history fuckwit... OBL got nicely funded by the CIA way back in the mid eighties fghting for the Mudjehadeen against the then soviet army which of course is what one of your inside the pentagon men Zibrinsky(?) is on the record as stating and there is no denial from the pentagon on this issue. THerefore, fuckwit, he was one of yours...But you neatly erase that fact by not acknowledging it...fuckin diddums

Also your moranic grasp of history which also undermines your argument is that it forgets the first gulf war, of the leaving of american troops in saudi that pissed off your blessed benefactor so much so he turned against you. That is why your man in one of the richest families related to the bushs via business is on a mission...

but this pulls the pish...
They see it more proufoundly than you do fuckwit... Your democracy is full on tax and gain for the democractic processes of the free market, to restructure, privatise, and make iraq a perfect rolemodel for the spread of neo-liberal niceness ie share options and bonuses for all involved in haliburton! When it comes to health care, blow the fuckin public hospitals up so that they have to pay to get medical care from the american run hospitals...lock up all youth in abu graid and take photos...get clueless journos to get the sources wrong on the abuse of the quran and more die...flatten a city of 300,000 to catch the phantom zarqawi

democracy is sweet, for your burger munchers innit fuckwit...You get fat on the profits while even in your country the poor, 45 million u.s. citizens cant afford health insurance...

And whats happening in leeds, madrid and fallujah, and the minds of the suicide bombers is all sideline...distraction

your modus operandi innit. good job being well done but not entirely unnoticed... and will come back to haunt you

The suicide bombers blew themselves up because they are stupid fuckers. Anyone dense enough to glorify suicide should perish. Its just a shame they are so heartless that they have to take innocents with them.

We supported Osama in Afghanistan and than he attacks us. I know the the script. He is an ungrateful prick. He should thank America for its support instead of attacking civilians.

One can imagine what the world would look like if America didn't step in after Saddam invaded Kuwait. Saddam might have rolled into Saudi Arabia after attacking Kuwait. He could control about 40% of the worlds oil reserves. And who would have stopped him? Europe

We have the second highest standard of living in the world behind Luxembourg.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html

Get your facts straight smart guy

And remember Bush and Blair are not responsible for Islamic terrorism. It has been going on long before they were in power. Poverty and imperialism are not responsible for Islamic terrorism, otherwise you would see Africans and Central Americans blowing themselves to bits.

Islamic terrorists are responsible for their own atrocities. They are the ones who need to look in the mirror.

 

[TeeJay]

First of all, you appear to assume that there is no muslim community in NA. Not true.

I'm not assuming that at all. But why do you think things are identical in NA and the UK? You think that knowing about Muslims in NA tells you a lot about the British asian community?

Thus, you look to mistreatment of muslims in your country for exlanations, while ignoring that you have other long suffering minorities there, just as there are elsewhere, who do not take up the rhetoric of martyrdom, and take to the streets, killing innocent people, in an attempt to get redress.

"You"? Are you including me in this comment, because I have made no such claim? I don't disagree with your general idea that this attack is most likely part of 'international jihad' rather than an attack based on local issues. What I am objecting to is generalisations about muslims and inaccurate and ill-informed comments about the british muslim community and the british asian community by people who don't really know anything about them and are instead projecting some vague and nebulous idea of the 'middle east' or 'muslims' as some kind of homogenous mass.

 

[TeeJay]

The suicide bombers blew themselves up because they are stupid fuckers. Anyone dense enough to glorify suicide should perish.

What do you think about soldiers who run into a hail of bullets and near certain death to take out the enemy? Surely there are plenty of British and Americans who are prepared to die in the course of their duty? Are they 'stupid fuckers' who deserve to die?

I don't support Islamist terrorists, but I don't think that they are necessarily 'stupid'. They have very different values and beliefs to me.

 

[TeeJay]

...Poverty and imperialism are not responsible for Islamic terrorism, otherwise you would see Africans and Central Americans blowing themselves to bits...

I have seen this argument used several times over the last few days.

Different people in different places end up fighting against who they see as 'the enemy' and against what they see as injustice depending on what kind of channels there are for them. There are all sorts of violent conflicts going on in Latin America, Africa and elsewhere, often with rebels, insurgents and terrorists fighting against governments or one ethnic group fighting against another.

Poverty and "imperialism" (ie foreign/great power intervention) are often key factors that continue to fuel these conflicts, and various ideologies - ethnic/nationalist/left/right - are held out as the "solution" - a way of recruiting, legitimising and organising insurgency etc.

Fundementalist 'Islamism' of the Al Qaeda sort is yet another brand. It may be the most explicitly anti-western in both thinking and tactics, but just like many other ideologies and 'struggles' it does feed off government corruption and violence, inequality and poverty, foreign interference, human rights abuses and a lack of democracy. It might be more affluent youths who take up the struggle but no doubt they will be motivated by what they percieve to be the suffering of the poor and oppressed. Instead of seeing western liberal democracy or socialism or secular ethnic nationalism as the "solution", they come to believe in 'Islamism' and sign up as their version of freedom fighters or soldiers, just like people join struggles or armies all round the world.

 

[laptop]

Fundementalist 'Islamism' of the Al Qaeda sort is yet another brand. It may be the most explicitly anti-western in both thinking and tactics, but just like many other ideologies and 'struggles' it does feed off government corruption and violence, inequality and poverty, foreign interference, human rights abuses and a lack of democracy. It might be more affluent youths who take up the struggle but no doubt they will be motivated by what they percieve to be the suffering of the poor and oppressed. Instead of seeing western liberal democracy or socialism or secular ethnic nationalism as the "solution", they come to believe in 'Islamism' and sign up as their version of freedom fighters or soldiers, just like people join struggles or armies all round the world.

Sound analysis.

But what you have to understand is that for mears the world is divided into Amerikans and Aliens. If an Amerikans tried to understand the differences between different Aliens, they'd have their citizenship taken away, wouldn't they?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

The US right and their supporters are promoting a global crusade against islam, meanwhile british neo-nazis propmote a local race war against pakistanis. To me, the propaganda lines coming out of both groups sound extremely similar.

They are both equally unhelpful in the present situation.

Both seek to exploit this situation for propaganda goals of their own, that I think are not in the interests of the British people. The US right may not be aiming at a race war in the UK, but rather at justifying global carnage or something.

The problem is, the overlap between the neo-con rhetoric and that of UK neo-nazis is significant and hence a large part of the impact of the neo-cons massive global propaganda machine, at least in the UK, is to promote race wars, to give aid and comfort to our local neo-nazis and to lend them media momentum in a way that they'd never be able to afford or achieve alone.

The more neo-con propaganda spills over into the UK, the worse this situation is. It's utterly unhelpful, but they aren't going to be able to refrain even if, as Blair probably is, they are perfectly aware of the damage it will cause here. They have too many fuck-ups to distract us all from to care.

 

[Jo/Joe]

Poverty and imperialism are not responsible for Islamic terrorism, otherwise you would see Africans and Central Americans blowing themselves to bits.

There could be truth in this Mears. After all, they have been and continue to be such peaceful regions.

THe thing about 'Binladenism', for want of a better term, is that it is seen to be effective by the people it recruits. It is the most successful channel through which those with burning resentments, and the right type of emotional/psychological make up, can unleash their hatred towards the west. Bush and Blair make it more attractive every time they open their mouths.

As for the British born suicide bombers, hopefully others like them will question what they have got themselves into, now they've seen the reality.

 

[oi2002]

I think what the Yanks aren't getting here is how marginal the Jihadis are in Islam. Their longterm goal is nuts: the restoration of the Caliphate and this just dosn't move the grassroots of the Umma. Their great rallying cry is that Islam is under attack and the scripturally fact that Muslims have a sacred duty to defend the faith. We must not attack the faith. We must attack Binladenism which is a heretical corruption of Islam.

They don't need much support the Umma is 14 Billion strong. If 0.01% of the Umma believes them that's a huge support base and thanks to modern communications the support base for terrorist operations can have a global spread.

This is not at all like fighting Nazi Germany, were the enemy had very strong support in the population and all we have to do is generate enough hate to get us to Berlin. It's not even like N.Ireland were PIRA had substantial support in the Catholic population or Israel were the Palestinians overwhelmingly suppported groups like the PLO.

There certainly are problems within the Umma its undergoing huge demographic changes, its highly reactionary and there is an unacceptable level of anti-semitism but demonizing Islam is a wrong headed approach to take when dealing with this problem.

 

[exosculate]

Fundementalist 'Islamism' of the Al Qaeda sort is yet another brand. It may be the most explicitly anti-western in both thinking and tactics, but just like many other ideologies and 'struggles' it does feed off government corruption and violence, inequality and poverty, foreign interference, human rights abuses and a lack of democracy. It might be more affluent youths who take up the struggle but no doubt they will be motivated by what they percieve to be the suffering of the poor and oppressed. Instead of seeing western liberal democracy or socialism or secular ethnic nationalism as the "solution", they come to believe in 'Islamism' and sign up as their version of freedom fighters or soldiers, just like people join struggles or armies all round the world.

What evidence do you have for this wild speculation?

 

[exosculate]

Sound analysis.

Really based on what evidence?

 

[nino_savatte]

I'm always suspicious of this "outside help" = "evil genius" stuff.

Someone I know well wrote a piece about a decade ago about the "evil genius" label being applied when the PIRA started using timers from video recorders in their bombs.

It's a piece of piss. "I want to make something happen in five days' time. I look around the house. Oh look, there's the video. Here's a screwdriver..."

That person is waiting for a visit from the Anti-Terrorism squad about that piece. But it remains the case that the "it's so hard" line is either a very useful lie, or a sign of the problems caused by almost all journalists being technically illiterate, or both.

d' accord!!!! This "mastermind" idea is bollocks. These guys carried this out without a so-called 'guiding hand'.

 

[Barking_Mad]

sat here in leeds, this morning my freinds street/s was surrounded by 200 armed po-lice, bomb squad and army officials... Sirens blarring while 500 people were evacuated and told they couldnt enter their own homes till 5 pm.

Many of these people with children had to seek support from the community, friends and nieghbours for food and shelter because, low and behold, the thousands of puondsworth of tax payers money that was ploughed into this mornings episode wasnt used to set up decent facilities for the community members that were caught up in this....

it all adds up to the tactics of spreading hype and fear ...nevermind the mosque firebombed in Armley and the visa centre firebombed in Bradford...and bush bliar and the corporate media are milking this for all its worth...

did the same happen for Fallujah? Nope. Does the same happen for Kabul? Nope...Does the same happen for the Mothers of British soldiers being killed in Iraq? Nope... In fact Bliar refuses to engage in their, quite justified, questions...

but hey such is the price of the war on terror...the corporate bigwigs and leaders of democracy couldnt give to fucks about the death and inconvienience of us while they carve up their rocketing share prices....

motherfucker.

Like Gumbert I live in Leeds and I know both the areas which were sealed off pretty well. One area because i work next to it (Beeston) and the other because I regularly use the road which was sealed off as a shortcut to get home during rush hour traffic (Burley). It's fair to say that both areas aren't the most pleasant in Leeds to live, but neither are they by any stretch of the imagination the worst.

I won't comment on the specific communities but what is noticable all round Leeds is a severe lack of money being pumped into community ventures. Anyone having lived in or visited Leeds in the last few years will have been struck by the number of very plush and expensive office buildings being erected around the city. The city skyline is awash with tall cranes and as I speak Leeds is getting its first skyscraper. Large amounts of council money have been spent on renovating the city centre, the train station, sandblasting old buildings etc.., and whilst money has been spent on many of the poorer suburbs it's obviously a comparitive drop in the ocean.

Residents from the area where the suspected bombers are from were moved down the road to a sports centre which is actually a minutes walk from where I live. In between where I live and the sports centre is an old liberal club building which has been stood empty and boarded up for the three years Ive lived there, possibly longer. About 18 months ago there was a community consultation (via post) as to what should be done to the building but as of yet nothing has been done. It sits there boarded up with a 24 hour security guard sat in a booth watching over it.

The council seems to find the time to pass building permits, yet the ability to do up an old building and turn it into a community centre seems beyond them. Maybe if the kids in these areas had something positive in their lives to do then they wouldn't fall through the gaps and end up being sucked into a world where petty crime and possibly even blowing people up wouldn't be an issue......