Ian Blair: "I'm not saying there are four bombers"

Credit has to go to Sir Ian Blair for correcting himself when he accidently claimed the existence of "four miserable bombers" when, in fact, nobody knows this to be the case yet.

SIR IAN BLAIR, LONDON METROPOLITAN POLICE COMMISSIONER:

"If London could survive the Blitz, it can survive four miserable bombers like this...."

[brief pause that always comes with an overwhelming sense of realisation]

"I'm not saying there are four bombers.... four miserable events like this."

Oh, and the military grade explosives that were rumoured to have been used on the Underground with sophisticated timers? Well, the timers never turned up and tonight Newsnight reports that the police have only found household chemicals in the Leeds homes that were raided, not military grade explosives.

Channel 4 News tonight showed a CCTV capture of the 'bus bomber' which they claimed "had been cropped from a wider picture of all four bombers". Why was it cropped? Surely seing them all four suspects together would help jog the memories of anyone that might have seen them, especially seeing as an individual photo is also being circulated.

Newsnight also announced that the CCTV camera on the Number 30 bus, conveniently enough, wasn't working. Not that it was affected in the blast, just that it wasn't working.

Also from Newsnight, the Number 30 bus driver had been ordered to re-route the bus on the morning of July 7th for it to end up in Tavistock Square.

The Antagonist has noted that indeed, according to TFL's route maps, Tavistock Square is not on the standard Number 30 bus route as the normal route would take the bus straight along Euston Road into Marylebone Road, rather than turning left into Woburn Place.

Who diverted it? On what basis? Was it diverted into the rehearsal operation approximately an hour and half after the simultaneous tube disasters, something which could account for the significant missing 81 minutes of the 'bus bomber' hitting the papers today? Was it going there anyway, something which, in keeping with the practice of these tactical rehearsal operations, the driver wouldn't be told until the last minute as per the Newsnight story?

How long would it take to investigate what happened on the trains in the deepest part of the Underground if a power surge had affected monitoring systems and lights as MetroNet and survivors reported at the time of the tragedy?


[Update 15/07/05@12:40: The Number 30 bus was going the other way down Euston Road and turned right into Woburn Place (Source: ITV News). This doesn't change the fact it was diverted to here.]