It’s President Barack Obama!
And a green toilet plunger!
On Saint Patrick’s Day!

That trial didn’t do much to help the police’s reputation, with last ditch attempts to smear the murdered man’s name with evidence such that he may or may not have been an illegal immigrant, or that he could have taken cocaine some time in the final few months of his life. They even doctored photographs of de Menezes and Hussain Osman, the failed suicide bomber who the police were supposed to be tailing (and, presumably, killing) in the first place, so they appeared to resemble each other. He could have been a junkie with ten fake passports for all I care; does that entitle the police to have shot him at point blank range?

We were in Malta when the shooting happened. The first we heard of it was when I got a text message from a friend asking were we all right. We thought he had somehow found out what had happened to us earlier that day; four of us had been involved in quite a nasty road collision, with our car being struck from behind at high speed, and us being carted off in an ambulance. It was only on receiving the text did we begin to find out what was going on at home that day.

At first it was all over the news that the police had thwarted a suicide bombing, by shooting the bomber. Thank God, said everyone. Then it came out that maybe he wasn’t a bomber but he had run from police and they thought he was one. He shouldn’t have run, said we shaking our heads. And then it turned out he hadn’t run, hadn’t known he was being followed and it could quite easily have been one of us getting shot that day. It’s bad enough having people blowing the place up, but now we have to worry about the police too?

Two weeks earlier, on the morning of what are generally called the 7/7 bombings, I was at work at my office in Westminster. Very soon after the first explosion went off we were hearing that there had been some power surges on the tube. Nobody believed that, and soon news began to come in of more power surges causing explosions.

As the penny slowly dropped I got a bit frantic, Herself was due to pass through the very epicentre of one of these explosions. It turned out that she had been kicked off her bus at Vauxhall bus station, the driver claiming that he didn’t know the way any further, so they had to get off his bus. It transpired later that the driver very probably feared there was a bomb on the bus, as this scene was repeated all over London. The public transport system quickly ground to a halt. After some hurried phone calls (including one with me stupidly letting slip to Herself that I thought it was a bombing – my boss frantically gesturing beside me not to panic my girlfriend), it was soon agreed that she would head straight home any way she could, and my manager let me hop on my bike and do the same.

The bike journey home itself was surreal, with me having to stop every few metres to take yet another phone call from someone checking to see if Myself and Herself were safe. As soon as I got home I began to make the same kind of phone calls myself.

When the city you live in is under attack (and let’s not feel sorry for ourselves here and forget that this is happening every single day for many, many people all over the world) you start to look at it differently. London is no stranger to regular violent explosions. The city dealt with IRA bombings from the 1970s right up until the late 1990s, and there still seems to be some kind of collective memory of the Blitz (the intense bombing of London during WWII), with evidence of the bombardment all over London to this day.

It might sound clichéd, but there was a sense during the days after the 7/7 attacks of some shard of the spirit of the Blitz, with rumours of random acts of kindness between strangers all over the city doing the rounds. People actually spoke to each other on the street, striking up conversations about the events themselves or simply asking for help to find the best route from A to B while swathes of the transport system were shut down. I even got to meet a few of my neighbours, an unheard of thing in London.

There were several bombings that morning, with many dead and many more maimed and injured, and over the following days and weeks people got to grips with getting the place up and running again and generally back to normal.

Things will never be the same again (two years on and the tannoy announcements on the tube, reminding us to watch our bags, still refer to us living in “a time of heightened security”) but we should be living in a city where seeing a police officer getting on a train makes you feel more, rather than less, at ease.

Jean Charles de Menezes was an ordinary person, a Londoner, one of us. He could have been anyone’s son, brother, father, partner. Had someone else who lived in his apartment building been unlucky enough to leave and be “identified” by the police before Jean Charles then it would have been that person who we would be talking about. If you live in London, he could have been you.

It is understandable for people, even police officers, to get edgy in the circumstances I’m talking about, but all of this could have been prevented if the police, at all levels, had simply been better trained. And I’m not talking in limp, flippant terms either – Jean Charles died first and foremost because the man who was supposed to identify Hussain Osman leaving the building was in fact busy going for a piss.

There are better, more intelligent, ways to prevent violent attacks, let’s hope the police learn some lessons from all of this, as unfortunately there is no plan B for the policing of our city.

While 2007 has begun for most of us with a shrug of the shoulders to the passage of time, the French are not a people to accept these things lying down, hence new years eve demonstrations in the French city of Nantes, protesting with slogans like “No to 2007″ and “Now is better”.

Apparently they did not succeed in stopping the flow of time this year, but are expected to be out in force on 31/12/2008.

The Northern Ireland Human Rights Council’s two-day conference, Building a Human Rights Culture in Northern Ireland, starts today. The NIHRC says its role is “to ensure that the human rights of everyone in Northern Ireland are fully and firmly protected in law, policy and practice.” However, does it practice what it preaches? The most significant assault by government upon our human rights is the ID Card Scheme and National Identity Register. Human rights group Liberty believes it has the potential to “…change our society and the way we live, forever.” What does the NIHRC think of this issue? ANSWER: Nothing.

In 2006 the NIHRC made 15 submissions – 3 on prisoners rights, 6 on policing and criminal justice, 4 on itself and associated work and 1 on victims and 1 on adoption. In one year, prisoners rights merit 3 submissions but an issue that effects everyone does not merit 1 over 3 years. Human rights for everyone?

[http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/weblog/comments/human-rights-for-everyone/]

Not a moment too soon, although many people may not have had to get them anyway, such as Irish people living in the UK.