The Times reports on Islamist terror groups' use of fake colleges to smuggle terrorists into the country. That's a strange departure as, up until now, they've always used British lads from Luton or Bradford. But there you go, our security services must be right, they did assure us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction didn't they?
What particularly struck me was that much of the report centres on East Manchester, where I grew up. Roughly speaking that means Gorton, Levenshulme, Openshaw and out to Tameside which includes Hyde and Hattersley. I can't help imagining the high dudgeon of the local citizens, indignant that Al Qaeda should lower the tone of East Manchester in such a terrible way.
Of course they are forgetting that Openshaw saw one of the first IRA murders on the mainland in the 1970s, outside my local as it happens. That Gorton, Hattersley, Hyde and Ashton-under-Lyne were where the Moors Murderers did their evil deeds. That Hyde was where Harold Shipman had his surgery. I'm bloody sure that he, and the previous events, did a great deal more to lower the tone of the neighbourhood than a few more terrorist raids that will probably lead to nowt but a few illegals, as also happened recently in North Manchester.
My parents always harp back, bless 'em, to the golden days when you could leave your front door open, not like theses days. I always have to check with them if by that they mean the 1950s, the decade when they suffered their only ever burglary and one grim night heard the screams of a woman being murdered in a nearby alley.
I suppose we all have our coping mechanisms. Mine is Morrissey and The Smiths so here we go:
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