The Glass Box for Monday
Welcome to the Glass Box for a new week - the place where you can comment on what you heard on PM, interact with other listeners and get responses from the people who make the programme.
We hope this will be a useful tool for you and for us. Just click on the "comment" link. If you've never commented on the Blog before - don't worry. There's a simple registration process you only have to go through once.
Don't worry either if you didn't catch the whole programme, or were busy doing other things and not giving us your full attention. If there was something that "caught your ear" we want to hear about it.
The Glass Box is named after the booth outside the PM studio where we all discuss the programme at 18.00 every weeknight. We try to be honest and constructive. Sometimes there is criticism, and the criticised get a chance to explain themselves.
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I am completely frustrated by the coverage of the terrorist trial. Not being a conspiracy theorist, I have no doubt that the suicide bombers caused the killings on 7th July, not the authorities or the intelligence services. We should be celebrating the fact that these people have been prevented by relevant intelligence from potentially killing or maiming people. Instead what we get is the usual "someone in authority must be to blame" game, which must give considerable satisfaction to those who wish us harm. I appreciate that it is equally due to opportunism by politicians who see a chance to embarrass their opponents, but the media is complicit, no matter what the political administration in power, because it makes a controversial news story. We have come to expect a standard from those in authority that we do not expect of ourselves and which is impossible for humans to achieve - ie never to make mistakes. It seems to me that in today's society, you can commit all manner of heinous actions and expect to be forgiven, but woe betide the official who makes a mistake
Re: (1) Although I would generally agree it's hard not to feel a little cynical when John Reid pops up at every opportunity feigning credit for the outcome of the trial. Both the investigation and the trial process began even before he took over responsibility of the Home Office which at the time he went to great lengths to discredit as being 'unfit for purpose'. How time flies.
Upon hearing your report on the 7/7 bombings, when combined with Tenet's statements and the "new" revelations to come out regarding the Air India bombing in my home country of Canada over 20 years ago (when the best teacher I ever had was killed); I am aghast at the sheer incompetence of all those who are charged with protecting "us all"! If all of the above turns out to be true, then I question both the point of spending millions on "security" as well as the true relevance of any "Western" government! It does appear to be an increasingly "take care of your own self" world, so maybe it it a case of everyone should be armed and head for a cave, to protect oneself. In a world where terrorists seem to go about their business with impunity and where billionaires get away with ecological "murder"; we all appear to be heading towards a place where one must be armed enough to protect ones loved ones. Perhaps I should start looking for remote land, with caves, in my homeland of Canada, and soon!
Not much to comment on about the programme really. I listened to the whole hour. Three-quarters given over to the Terror trial, only 15 minutes for everything else, including the weather.
Ordinarily that might lead to a chorus of people complaining about the lack of balance, with the news coming up immediately afterwards. But the story and it's ramifications were so many and varied that it allowed PM to make the best use of having a whole hour to cover the matter in some depth.
I carried on watching this story during the 6 on ´óÏó´«Ã½1 and the special Panorama programme at 7 on ´óÏó´«Ã½1 also. Overall I felt the coverage was excellent, on radio and TV. There are many branches to this story and it will undoubtedly take some further time to chase the loose ends down.
I could mutter under my breath about the time given to one story, in fact I probably will. But it was explored very well, given the relative lack of time to prepare after the verdicts were announced. So kudos for that.
Si.
I thought the terrorism trial coverage was very good and for once was worth the indepth analysis. Lost complete interest when the Kate Moss thing popped up - the 1997-2007 article would have fitted in nicely there instead.
Perhaps I should start looking for remote land, with caves, in my homeland of Canada, and soon!
Colin, the way things are looking, I'll be thar afore ya.
To Mr Eddie Mair
The trial of the Omar Khyam terror gang provokes horror at the scale of the atrocities being planned, relief that they were thwarted, and dismay that the intelligence services missed an early opportunity to monitor the Yorkshire bombers Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shezhad Tanweer.
Surveillance of Khyam and his associates it seems resulted in 15 radicalised young Muslims being classified as essential targets, and 40 others, including Khan and Tanweer, as being of interest.
We're told that this "short-listing" process was a direct consequence of limited resources available to the security services, and it has to be said that the information gleaned about Khan and Tanweer suggested that they were bit-part players involved in illegal money-raising activities.
It is a measure of the pressure the intelligence agencies were under that such activities should have been put on the back burner. They were, after all, either contemplating or committing serious offences which would, in any other circumstances, have warranted investigation. Compared, however, with a terrorist atrocity calculated to maim and kill large numbers of the public indiscriminately, disrupt the nation's life and rupture inter-community relations on a grand scale, I can understand that they would seem rather unimportant.
Tragically we now find out, the activities of Khan and Tanweer were not limited to defrauding banks and credit card companies as they, along with Germaine Lindsay and Hasib Mir Hussain, so bloodily demonstrated on July 7, 2005. Khan slipped through the net once again because it's revealed that when investigators showed a photograph of him to the US terrorist Mohammed Junaid Babar who had met him at terrorist training camp in Pakistan, Babar failed to recognise him. Furthermore, he had known Khan by a different name - one that meant nothing to those who were questioning him.
This and the other slips which allowed the bombers to proceed towards their final, terrible act, do provide lessons for the intelligence community - but lessons which will have unwelcome effects.
The 7/7 atrocity and the Khyam terror case justify that most unpleasant assumption of guilt by association; it brings the innocent as well as the guilty within all-encompassing suspicion, but every contact which an extremist has is potentially another strand in the terrorist network, and if previously the security services were not convinced of this, they will be now.
Links between terrorism and radical Islamist organisations, radical clerics and certain mosques show that no manifestation of Islamist extremism can be ignored. Silencing those such as Abu Hamza means a further erosion of freedom of expression, but that is a price society must pay.
Lastly, vigilance is demanded of everyone - Muslim and non-Muslim alike. The security service will have learned important lessons from the prosecution of this case, but it would be naive indeed to think that those who promote terrorism have not grown wiser as well.
The news cupboard must have been overflowing last night; not only the terrorist trial, but also the announcement regarding Prince Harry's deployment to Iraq.
Overall the trial got the coverage it deserved, it is an important event and the links with the attack on 7th July 05, needed to be scrutinised.
Why do I bother? You didn't post my window on your world photo. You didn't reply to my email about it. You didn't post my Save Vaughan Savidge comment.
Back to Radio 1 at least Colin Murray acknowledges me even though at 55yrs of age I'm more in your demographic than his.
May I compliment Eddie on his interviews yesterday? They were searching, yet unconfrontational, and seemed to bring out the best in his interviewees.
(Incidentally, I've noticed that the great Humphrys is developing this aspect of his interviewing technique - proof that old dogs can learn new tricks!)
I found the coverage of the terrorism verdicts extremely interesting, and the interviews particularly good. By the end of the programme, I felt I'd learnt a lot more about, not only the particulars of the case, but also the background to the growth of dissatisfaction amongst an element of the Asian population which has allowed the 'threat' to develop.
I have not heard on any news reports that, in their search for the abducted 3 year old Madelaine, the Portuguese police have checked out all the yachts in the area and those leaving the port -- or already out at sea. It seems so obvious...; maybe they are doing this, but it certainly has not been mentioned.