The incompetent antics of this weekend's would-be jihadist bombers were laughable, of course, and to ridicule these sad lunatics is absolutely the right thing to do, because it'll do us the world of good, and that's the most important thing at present.
Too bad if it causes offence and enrages millions of Muslims worldwide - they need to wake up and smell the coffee. This is real life in the 21st Century, a life where like it or not, the things that count are financial clout, military power, negotiation, diplomacy, intelligence, the manipulation of the media and the ability to see yourself and others in a true perspective. It's not a world that can or ever again will be controlled by supernatural belief and bigotry. And don't, just don't, let them try to frighten us with threats of violence and cruelty. They should read the history books. We do violence and cruelty pretty well ourselves, so if they think they're hard enough ….
Welcome to Glasgow
But underneath the humour of this spectacle of fearless freedom-fighters setting themselves on fire and being foiled by traffic-wardens, there are some sinister lessons to be learned.
First is the mealy-mouthed attitude of the media. One of the most delightful and, to us ordinary mortals, satisfactory bits of news was the interview with Glasgow man who apprehended one of the terrorists. He said "I saw this Asian guy running towards me shouting 'Allah' so I battered him" (what kind of idiot was that terrorist? Didn't he realise he was in Glasgow, for God's sake?).
Within hours this clip had vanished from the TV news websites, along with reports of passengers yelling "Let the bastard burn" as police grappled with the burning man. Why was that? Perhaps there will be charges of assault and racial abuse to follow?
Secondly there's the suggestion that the attacks in London really failed because of the stringent parking regime there. It's simply impossible to leave a car at the roadside long enough to set off a bomb. And in Glasgow the blazing Jeep hit a bollard and speed humps. In the words of Littlejohn, "only in Britain could traffic calming and wheel clamping make a major contribution to homeland security" - which more or less guarantees that we will never again be free of speed humps and the London congestion charge. So the terrorists did do some damage to our way of life after all.
Even more seriously, there is the fact that some of the terrorists seem to have been doctors. At least the politicians will no longer be able to peddle this crap about Muslim disaffection being caused by our own intolerance and unfairness.
But why are we importing newly-qualified doctors from Iraq when thousands of home-grown medical students can't find jobs?
The Labour government is directly responsible for this mess. It is government policies that have taken policemen off the streets and chained them to their desks, it is government policies that have kept the doors of this country resolutely open even to those who are already known as terrorists or sympathisers - two men still on the run are described as members of a Middle Eastern terror cell who moved to Britain last year. How did that happen? Who voted to make this country a safe haven for Middle East terrorists? Why were they allowed in? If they were known terrorists, why weren't they subsequently rounded up and kicked out?
And it's government policies that have allowed the creation of separate communities of hate-filled, alien zealots, people who came here with no intention of finding a niche in British society, but every intention of sponging off it as much as possible while scorning our way of life, language, customs and social structures. The government's much-vaunted multicultural society has brought enclaves of stone-age barbarity into our towns and cities.
And if anyone dares speak out, they are branded racist - even, sad to say, in our own Grumpy Guestbook, so endemic has this mealy-mouthed way of thinking become.
Gordon Brown went on television to assure us that the safety of the British people is paramount. We might feel a bit happier if we hadn't all been muttering under our breath "Yeah, right. Just so long as it doesn't cause offence to any minority groups, or infringe the human rights of any immigrants, or entail any expense that can't be passed on to the general public …."
The GOS says: Britain has 1% of the world's population but takes 3% of the world's refugees. How nice of us. Would they take us, if the boot were on the other foot?
And the humanitarian aim of our generosity is entirely misplaced. We'd do much more good in the world if instead of receiving refugees from troubled areas, we simply paid for their upkeep in neighbouring countries - it would cost us less in the long run. In 2004 we took in about 40,000 Afghans, of whom only 40 are known to have gone home. In the same year, ten times that number decided that they no longer needed the refuge of camps in Pakistan, and went home.
Had a little holiday with Mrs.GOS in France recently. On the ferry from Dover to Dunquerque, carloads of nice middle-class British families, kids and grannies, off to have fun in the sun (and what a disappointment that was!).
On the return journey, we were lost among a flood of elderly heavily-laden Volvos and Mercedes packed to bursting with … well, shall we say foreign people, all being waved merrily through the port controls by happy officials in bright yellow jackets, welcoming these holiday makers to our shores …
I mean … they were holidaymakers … weren't they? How would anyone know?
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