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Some time ago the Metropolitan Police released one rather badly put together image of the four alleged bombers on 7 July from which all but one of the faces is vaguely distingushable. It looked rather like this:
Not being a graphic designer, far be it for The Antagonist to comment on the legitimacy of this photograph. Suffice to say it's complete bollocks. Digital media manipulation is a craft. It is also a craft that the craftsmen and architects of the 7/7 debacle don't seem to have acquired yet. Back to the point....
Here are a few of the stories so far from various media sources about what happened after that photo was 'taken':
"They boarded the 7.48am to London carrying return tickets."Source: Independent
"The four bombers had travelled together on the 7.40am train from Luton to King's Cross before going their different ways."Source: Telegraph
"Hasib Hussain, an 18-year-old from Leeds, is shown in a CCTV image mounting the stairs at Luton station before taking the 7.40am train to King's Cross."
The 7.40am Luton to Kings Cross Thameslink train did not run that morning so it is pretty unlikely anyone caught this train, much less so the four virtually faceless Asian men in the photograph above.
Horizon tonight claimed that the alleged bombers caught the 7.48am train from Luton and arrived at Kings Cross at 8.20am.
That doesn't work either.
The 7.48am train left Luton 8 minutes later than its scheduled time on 7 July 2005. The arrival time of 8.20am reported by Horizon would have been the case had the train been running on time. In fact, the train arrived at Kings Cross at 8.42am - a total of 22 minutes later than the scheduled arrival time reported by Horizon.
By 8.42am that morning two of the trains had already left Kings Cross, presumably not containing the alleged bombers that couldn't physically have been there given the photographic CCTV image released by the Metropolitan Police and the real, actual and factual timetables of 7 July as confirmed by the train operating companies involved.
All change. Please mind the gap.
Further details about the train times on the day London was bombed - from official filibustering sources - on the Mysterious Case of the Non-Existent Train Time, the definitive site for official 7/7 train information.
6 comments:
You refer to Bridget Dunne's site as the definitive reference for train timetables.
Well in one of her blog posts which you link to she has constructed a timetable which states that the train scheduled to leave Luton station 3 minutes after the timestamp on the Luton CCTV camera actually left one minute late at 7:25am and arrived at Kings Cross station at 8:23.
On her blog dedicated to finding out the departure times for the trains leaving Kings Cross, she states in her post The Train Times At Last! that the departure times she has received were as follows:
08:35 - Eastbound Circle line
08:42 - Westbound Circle line
08:48 - Piccadilly Line train
So using "the definitive site for official 7/7 train information" by your own assessment you have discovered that if the London bombers took the first train to Kings Cross after arriving at Luton station (as you generally would) they would have made it to Kings Cross in time to each catch the respective trains which were bombed.
If the title of your blog post here about "musical trains" refers to differing press accounts of which trains were caught that's one thing.
However the blog dedicated to finding out precise details of what the press would not seems to have pretty convincingly debunked any mystery about the journey of these bombers and the supposed impossibility of their journey.
So you can continue to refer to how press accounts are using incorrect details about impossible timings of events - but at least you know these are press errors and bear no relationship to the journey actually taken by the bombers.
Thank you for your comment and for hinting at one conclusion that can be drawn from the factual evidence presented on The Mysterious Case of the Non-Existent Train Time about events that occurred on 7 July.
If "the blog dedicated to finding out precise details of what the press would not" has indeed "pretty convincingly debunked any mystery about the journey of these bombers and the supposed impossibility of their journey", rather more interesting lines of inquiry open up, one of which being:
Why did the Metropolitan Police issue factually incorrect details about the activities of the alleged 7 July bombers and why have they allowed this misleading information to continue to be propagated by the world's media?
With specific reference to the three minutes between the Luton CCTV image and the departure of the train to Kings Cross, there remains the issue of whether or not it is possible for four men to order, pay for and collect four sets of return tickets - necessitating waiting for eight individual tickets to be printed - before locating, making their way to and boarding the only train that could have got them to Kings Cross.
The parallels between the misinformation disseminated about 7 July and the misinformation that followed the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes are too great to be ignored. Two separate attacks on innocent members of the British public immediately after which the authorities set about propagating information that, with hindsight, can only be viewed as deliberately misleading.
The victims, their families and the British people deserve better from the authorities that purport to be their servants.
Why did the Metropolitan Police issue factually incorrect details about the activities of the alleged 7 July bombers and why have they allowed this misleading information to continue to be propagated by the world's media?
I don't know. You could assume they probably released whatever information they had at that time and all media outlets have referenced it as it has come from the same official source as most other information.
As for why it has not been corrected perhaps they have seen no reason to. You should hope that police investigating terrorism have more pressing matters in the wake of al Qaida recruited Brits bombing the capital.
I do not see how the families of the dead or even the dead themselves are in any way effected by the media or police incorrectly reporting what time the train left Luton. You could probably assume that they have no interest in a train which didn't get bombed when the train they were travelling on did.
If you have other issues with the British establishment I would recommend you raise those issues instead of continuing this. Implying that this is in some way an affront to the victims of the attacks is not only disingenuous but in my opinion quite tactless.
How the families of the victims, and the survivors, are affected by the police and the media issuing misinformation as if it were fact is entirely self-evident from the precious few media stories that dare to highlight the concerns held by families of the victims.
On the same day of the memorial service allegedly held on behalf of the victim's of 7 July, BBC News published a story headed, Bombs families' 'feel sidelined' in which they outlined a number of concerns of the families. Quoting from that article:
- One woman who lost her mother said she felt "sidelined" during preparations for the St Paul's Cathedral service.
- Sean Cassidy, who lost his 22-year-old son Ciaran in the Piccadilly Line blast, said he felt relatives' concerns had not been a priority. "We had contact last week with Tessa Jowell. But the government were having contact with the Muslim community within 24 hours of the bombs going off. Why didn't they come and see some of us? We were the ones who were suffering."
- Saba Mozakka, whose mother Behnaz was killed in the same explosion, told BBC Breakfast she felt "sidelined" by the government in their preparations for Tuesday's event. She said they had heard nothing from the government until a meeting was arranged with Tessa Jowell last week at two days' notice. "It just feels we have been totally sidelined," she said. "As far as we are concerned my mother has been murdered. Like any other normal murder we need to know what's going on and that applies to the police as well."
In the words of Marie Fatayi-Williams: "Other mothers' hearts must be bleeding like mine. It's the same blood flowing through our veins and the same death pangs and the same love for our children and so when one is taken so brutally from you, you want to know."
It would, of course, be possible for those who view such things dispassionately and disingenuously to pretend that losing loved ones in the midst of such confusion and misinformation would make dealing with such a tragedy easier than it would otherwise be but that would, of course, be nothing more than a pretense.
There is no question that the misinformation and lies surrounding the events of the 7 July have had and continue to have a rather sizeable effect on the victim's families and survivors.
Further, there is no question that the misinformation and lies will continue to have determimental effects until such time as the families and survivors feel they have not been sidelined by the authorities into accepting any old rubbish as the reason for either the death of their loved ones, or the injuries they have suffered and survived.
The victim's families feel 'side-lined' by the British authorities. Discuss.
There is no question that the misinformation and lies surrounding the events of the 7 July have had and continue to have a rather sizeable effect on the victim's families and survivors.
There is now. I'll question you.
State all the ways in which the bombers travelling on one train instead of another from Luton to London effects these families when in either case they then carried out bombings on other lines.
You say "there is no question" that this is the case. I cannot think of one way in which they are effected. If there are a lot of reasons put them in bullet form.
BTW when I ask how train times have any effect on those victims of the 7/7 bombings I am referring to those train times which are the subject of your article - the departure times from Luton. Not trains going to some memorial service at a later date.
If you wanted to discuss families feeling sidelined from preparations for memorial services which involved no trains or timetables you should probably create a separate article for that. It appears to have nothing to do with this one.
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