Another Bomb Attempt

Another bomb threat in Central London has been averted today. The news is currently filled with nothing but this news. According to the article:

Police were alerted by an ambulance crew who saw smoke coming from the silver Mercedes, parked near the Tiger Tiger nightclub.

And that's the story being repeated by the news crews. Although the British intelligence and security services are doing their best at stopping things like this, it didn't detect this attempt. This attempt was foiled by public vigilance and sheer luck.

It doesn't seem like a good idea to work or live in London these days. This bomb was likely planned to go off in the wee hours of the morning, when all the young people come out of the nightclub. There were supposedly 500+ people in the nightclub at one point. I wonder which party is responsible for this action. No one has claimed responsibility for this failure.

Okay, as interesting as this bit of news is, it doesn't affect me much here. So, I should really get back to work and monitor the news on BBC News 24.

UPDATE@1340: This is baptism by fire for the new UK cabinet, which was just appointed yesterday. So, Jacqui Smith, on her very first day as Home Secretary, has to now deal with this incident. Maybe the bombers had wanted to take advantage of the new cabinet to hopefully cause maximum confusion and carnage.

UPDATE@1345: The UK government has just appointed a navy man into a new counter terrorism post. Interesting development. I guess that the events today would make it easy to justify his appointment, with little opposition. Also, Jacqui Smith had just given a press statement, not Gordon Brown. Seems like Mr Brown doesn't care to hog all the limelight, unlike his predecessor.

UPDATE@2100: A second car had been found. Funny thing is, the second car was parked a few hundred yards down from the first car. It was ticketed at 2am and towed away at 3am! Seems that it didn't park legally! Also, it's extremely amateurish for two car bombs to have failed. The press are speculating that the bombs were not made to go off, but was just left there in the open, to frighten people. If terrorists were involved, they should really fire the person hired to make the bombs who is clearly an incompetent bomb maker. Thankfully!