What’s next for us Londoners? Complimentary crash helmets? Coats of armour?
Even the bollards on the bridges and around Parliament can’t protect anyone, as proven by this morning’s terrorist attack. London’s bridges used to be a joy to walk over. You would approach them and enjoy the sense of openness and space that they presented to the casual stroller as he or she prepared to walk over them to enjoy the pleasures of the South Bank. And halfway over any of the bridges, one could pause and drink in the sights of the Thames and the majesty of the architecture, both old and new. You wouldn’t be squashed against other tourists and commuters and trapped within ugly black bollards as we are today, fighting our way to get past one another. Walking across any of London’s bridges is no longer a pleasure; it is a push and shove and a thing to be avoided. Courtesy of Islam.
Nowadays, approaching any Central London bridge is akin to animals in slaughterhouses being led through restrainers to their halal death. The bollards are ugly and are usually congested with cyclists.
Getting through them with buggies or luggage is a struggle, and tempers flare. The lesson from today’s latest terrorist attack by a Muslim is that we see that the solution is not to place bollards all around a beautiful city; the answer is to get rid of jihadis and jihad sympathizers, recruiters and preachers from the West altogether. Let them go and live their lives however they want in the Middle East or Africa; just keep them away from civilized lands. One life lost is one life too many. One stupid statement in defense of a barbaric ideology is one stupid statement too many. (And I say this as I await Theresa May to come out in defense of someone having “misunderstood a beautiful religion.”)
Bollards are not the solution. There are a multitude of streets in Central London where any vehicle, large or small, could cause immense damage and result in the loss of countless lives. Take Soho, for example. On Old Compton Street, the revelers walk on the road as a normal occurrence, holding up the traffic and giving not a jot about any vehicle that is trying to overtake or get past them. The people don’t stick to the pavement. All it takes is one man with a van at full speed, and you’d have at least 20 or 30 people dead or seriously wounded. 7 Dials, over by Covent Garden, is the same. There are any number of streets in London onto which a car or a van could mount a pavement and kill pedestrians. Piccadilly Circus is ripe for this, what with all the tourists. A car could mount the pavement and go straight through Leicester Square, because there’s nothing stopping it from doing so. The same with Chinatown. And I mention these places because they are the most highly populated but the least protected by these moronic bollards that are protecting no one.
How many bollards can the government reasonably expect to erect? How ugly are they prepared to allow this city to become? The sight of them, to any tourist, isn’t inviting. This morning’s terrorist attack, and the fact that the man’s car was able to get through the bollards, is reason enough for me to insist that they be removed altogether. If people won’t be killed on Westminster Bridge, they’ll be killed on another street. Bollards are not the answer. Getting rid of the threat is. But that would necessitate a government with a strong enough backbone to do so. Until we find a leader with a backbone and a sense of national pride and a respect and dignity for his people, we are sacrifices on the altar of Islam.
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