London... recurring scares

The news that there are further problems in London while I've been away certainly means I'll be returning to the UK with some level of trepidation. Warren St tube, where one of the latest suspects was caught on CCTV, is only down the road from my house, while news that Tottenham Court Road was evacuated means that almost certainly my colleagues and friends in the area were taken out of work, some for a long walk home for the second time in two weeks.

Inevitably, for some people thoughts will turn to alternatives to London living, although we do not yet know whether terrorist alerts and scares will become a routine occurance, or whether this will be one of the last incidents in the near future. In this sense, the city will have to get used to a sense of uncertainty, whether we like it or not.

Already, commentators are comparing the situation in London to that of Northern Ireland not so long ago, most directly with the Omagh bombing of 1998. Let's hope that the situation does not become so bad that these comparisons become confirmed and accepted, and that things return to some state of normality soon.