Phones, letters, e-mails
| 09:29 UK time, Friday, 7 July 2006
The audience response given to the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ in the past 24 hours included people thinking it was wrong to give emphasis to the video of 7 July bomber Shehzad Tanweer, which was revealed on al-Jazeera. Opinion divided between those who applauded the Today programme interview with John Prescott and those who thought it was too much.
We also received this e-mail: "While I fully realise the importance of the anniversary of the London Bombings, I feel you are just wallowing in it. This is an increasing trend. Anniversaries need to be recognised, but not made into media show-pieces."
Comments
Yes, your correspondent's email is bang on: the media coverage of this is just overkill. All we have heard in the last couple of days is 7/7. How difficult must it be for the people involved to see all the details being rather pruriently raked over yet again for no great purpose.
We are becoming a mass culture of conspicuous grieving and it's not healthy.
And the surprise over the Tanweer video. They were hardly going to send a wreath, considering they murdered 52 people last year, were they?
Marking anniversaries with silences seems to be a fad. Why didn't we do the same for the Kings Cross fire, or the Herald of Free Enterprise? More people died in both of those incidents than last year's tragic bombings.
Let's spend the effort trying to address the issues that caused them, rather than wallowing in the tragedies.
I understand the sentiments of Jim in Post 1, but it's too early to tell if holding a silence is just a passing fad or a new tradition that's here to stay. I wonder what will happen if a (completely unrelated) tragedy occurs on 7th July 2009? Would there be a silence for the victims of 7.7.05 and another for 7.7.09, or one silence for all?
I also agree with the need to address the causes of the problems, but given the attention span of the general public I think we need these memorials lest we forget. And forgetting history simply allows it to repeat itself.