Simon's Blog

(The Times 30th August 2014)

I woke up this morning to this bone chilling headline and wondered what the hell had happened over night? What new outrage had taken place to suggest that the ISIS hoards were about to storm the ferry ports at Dover? Well it turns out nothing has changed. ISIS or IS are still as over blown fanatics as they were yesterday. They are blood thirsty and driven. They use all the modern organs of social media to try and portray their message of hate and violence – joins us or die a horrible death. I have no interest in their views nor do I believe they are anything other than the latest manifestation of terrorists who try to impose their will on the unwilling.

I have no idea what it is that seems to attract ‘ up to 500 ‘ muslims from Britain to want to go over to Iraq/Syria and fight for ISIS. I cannot say how much a perversion of the message of Islam they’re ideology is. What I do know is that in time they will fail because you can only keep up the intensity for so long before it starts to eat itself. After all we are told that ISIS itself morphed out of other terrorist groups. They are violent and media savvy but that is it, they may even inspire some crazed person to do something outrageous but in the long term they are no more a viable threat than any of the other groups that come before them.

So what has changed? What has made these people such a greater threat in the last three days? Well the Home Office is unsure. In the same article they were unable to point to any specific intelligence that might warrant the change of the threat level. Yet yesterday it was raised.

So has anything else happened in the last three days to perhaps make the Prime Minister feel compelled to make the British people suspect they are just a little less safe in their homes. Perhaps it is the unfolding war in Ukraine – Russians have been found out yet again by satellite photos showing tanks and guns inside Ukraine. However, these are video game images according to the Russians not the product of a multi billion dollar spy satellite system which can just about spot a Russian squadie picking his nose. If this wasn’t so tragic it would comic.

So not Ukraine, no new intelligence what else could have happened in the last three days? It couldn’t be that one of the awkward squad on the Tory right has just defected to UKIP causing great embarrassment to Prime Minister. Now that would be a very low view of politics for a Prime Minister to try and defect bad domestic news by making an outrageous fuss over something that hasn’t changed in any significant sense. To be far to the Prime Minister he is not the only politician who has pulled such a stunt and I guess he won’t be the last. It is just so unnecessary, that is unless ,of course, you are facing an out of control right wing to your party and an election in just over 6 months time which you are looking less likely to win. Goodness only knows what demon he will try and pull out of his hat should the Scots vote for independence.

So there we have it. A politician running scared for his job and a terrorist group and their followers, Both desperate for their story to get out and in some perverted way keen to make the terrorist group a much bigger threat than they already are. And they wonder why we don’t trust the whole political class. Can’t wait for the general election campaign to start….

Simon Marchini
http://www.simonmarchini.co.uk