People who should be proud of themselves:

1. The bus driver at Liverpool Street who first decided to act as an ambulance, carrying the ‘walking-wounded’ to the Royal London Hospital.

2. The employee in Marks and Spencers at Edgware Road, who gave out free clothes to survivors who came out of the tube station with their clothes burnt off them, and blankets to all involved.

3. The British public for not having responded with a knee-jerk, reprisal-seeking reaction.

People who should be ashamed of themselves:

1. The opportunists: people who were charging others to use their phones, hotels which tripled their rates on the night of the bombings.

2. The Sun, for its hatred-rousing headlines and commentary.

3. Anyone who thinks that killing ordinary people of all races and religions is going to go achieve anything except more polarisation and hatred.

Amongst all the ‘Are you ok’s?’, ‘I’m just checking in’s’ and ‘Crikey, have you been caught up in all of this’s?’, the best response that I got to the news of the bombings was a text sent at around 1.30pm yesterday:

‘Thanks for your text – glad you’re ok. Was just going to call – have just seen it on the news. Have been watching cricket all morning. Australia are 135-5′.’

Hope all you Londoners are ok out there.

Sucks to the curmudgeons who think that the infrastructure won’t cope, the building will run over schedule and we Londoners will end up footing the bill. I genuinely think our bid was the best, and as an East London resident on the property market, who am I to complain about today’s news?

I have always found the anti-French sentiment of so many English people strange. But I have to say I found myself sniggering at Chirac’s food blunder, and unmoved by the tears of the French shown so repeatedly on the news programmes here. However, I found the reaction of the cleaner at work, ‘John the Bog’ a little extreme: he came roaring into my staid city office, arm raised in a victory salute, saying ‘Well our council tax may go up, but at least we fucked the French!’

This week sees the brilliantly titled ‘Stars of CCTV’ by Staines based group Hard-Fi released.

Seemingly tangentially, I was reading a style guide for how to write for The Economist yesterday, and it said something along the lines of ‘Nobody likes a smart-arse. Never say we told you so about something, even if it was accurately predicted in The Economist previously.’

About a month ago I was telling anyone who would listen to go and put money on Hard-Fi charting with the release. I see that the last single ‘Hard to Beat’ is at number 17.

I guess my point is: watch out for these guys – they are great and I think they are going to be big.