Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

Just filling time till the American friends start emailing with "oh my gawd, awe you awright?"

So after watching Doctor Who (whodathunkit, and I meant that in reference to the plot twists and much tie-age of loose ends, not the watching of it, though that too), flicking through other channels brought me to digital news. Big blazing Breaking News banners (live and direct from the yard of Clarence Gillmoreton and Son's Scrap Metal Merchants where a 1983 Ford Siesta is currently being crushed at the end of a hectic week, here, in the breaker's yard, yes, I did just explain that joke because I wasn't sure who would get it) tell me that something's happening. Of course, they do tend to wheel them out for the opening of a Tesco's, but unless the supermarket has started offering store-roasted hot chestnuts it probably wasn't that.

A few seconds of waffle merged with the looped Viewer Video (odd name for a viewer) and endlessly repeating captions, and I discern what's happened. Car bomb, Glasgow airport, Scotland abandoned (insert joke using the word 'tell' here). More details follow. Turns out suicide bombers drove into the front entrance of the airport and blew up their car. The anchors admit that no one appears to have been killed and the only confirmed injury was a man on fire, who has police kneeling on him, presumably to smother the flames. The anchors are looking slightly upstaged by the dramatic captions by this stage, which seem have resorted to giving dictionary definitions of words (coming up in the next half hour, Boggle and Sodoku).

A couple of interviews later they switch to an American security expert who says how he'd bring the country to it's knees (no comment on whether that would be in a London park at 3 am), at which point I flick through the other channels to see if there's anything else on. You may noted it was an event so serious they didn't pull Doctor Who for it (though I imagine even the Queen would be asked if she wouldn't mind holding her last words till after the closing titles). They didn't even pull the completely rained-off Wimbledon coverage. ITV carried on showing The Mummy (surely a torture tactic in itself) and Channel 4 ploughed bravely on with the 100 Most Warmongering Film Lists featuring the cast of Rentaghost or something of that ilk (sorry, Rentatalkinghead was it? Oh).

So what happened? Two people drove a Jeep Cherokee into a concrete block outside an airport while waving a can of petrol about, somehow managed to set light to it, then jumped out crying something which is reported to have been (as relayed by a baggage handler who'd just nipped out for a smoke) "Allah, Allah, Allah", although could equally well have "Owie, Owie, Owie - no one told me burning petrol was hot", then tried beating up the policemen who came to extinguish and arrest them. So the sum total of their achievements as infidel striking suicide bombers was to destroy a car, a lumpenly ugly, hideously inefficient, nightmare to drive of a car at that, set fire to part of a canopy, oh and to cause travel disruption during the local school holidays (which is traditionally the job of the French, and could probably be done just as well by a curious mouse). Oh, and someone, somewhere may have broken their leg, although it's not yet know if it was caused by a terrorist or a policeman standing on it.

So they:
- Wrote off a car, which to be honest isn't terribly hard. They could at least have done it a more entertaining way; don't these people watch Top Gear? As for the car they choose, if they wanted to upset capitalism, why not a Porsche Cayenne? If they wanted to upset the country, it should have an E-type Jag (isn't that the worst part of The Italian Job?). As it is there'll probably be some small celebrations that such an aberration has been taken off the road (though it could probably manage that quite happily on its own, American cars being what they are).
- Melted some plastic, which may marginally increase the risk of cancer in those downwind.
- Didn't quite manage to kill themselves, which as suicide attacks go is mildly inept.
- Paid the government a fair amount to do so through the tax on petrol.

Yay them. Yep, that's really socking it to the man. To use a grossly inappropriate phrase, they've not exactly set the world ablaze. One pictures the arresting offices as addressing the duo as "daft wee buggers". As it is of those on television the chief complaint was being made to stand in the rain.

I'm guessing there was a translation mix up and they didn't quite get that terrorism rather depends on instilling terror in a given population, as opposed to eliciting mirth, condescension, derision and dismissal.

But in other news, Gordon Brown's parting act at the Treasury? To cut the budget for English hospitals, but only English hospitals. Now there's a man who knows how to instil fear in a populace.

Anyhoo,