Turns out now there were 4 bombs, and one was on a bus.
a lot of people have been killed. I beleive that the final bomber couldn't get on a train as the underground system had been closed, so he/she got on a full bus, it being full because the trains were off.

We must never give in.

news: they think they have found another bomb. don't know what yet.
your man on the spot - shambler

I was at the "Make Poverty History" rally in Edinburgh on Saturday. As we got off the boat at Stranraer on Friday we were subjected to the most stringent checks on ourselves, our luggage and were made to fill out pink cards with our names, occupations, inside leg measurements, etc and also made to announce our names to a video camera, all as part of the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The police even used bomb dogs to sniff out the 3 coaches we were on for any sign of terrorist-related material. The passengers on the 3 coaches included women, children and OAPs.

They found a Palestinian flag.

The over-zealous police presence was all too evident in the centre of Edinburgh too, with cops all over the place (perhaps even as provocation, but I digress). Admittedly there was trouble on Monday and yesterday, but the Saturday march went off with few hitches.

So, with all of this (including half of Scotland Yard) in place to protect the G8 leaders from the masses, I can't help but see the irony that a terrorist attack planned for during the summit takes place in London, right under the government's nose.

Nonetheless, my condolences go out to those affected by the attacks. Not since the peak of the IRA bombings has London seen such carnage. It will be interesting to see how civil liberties will be further affected by today's events.

What do terrorists hope to accomplish by this? i mean, why do they do it? do they think they'll be hailed and feared throughout the world? "OH I JUST BLEW UP A BUS WITH A BOMB! NOW, ALL U PEONS BOW BEFORE ME-*gunfire*" Seriously. if you want to be a terrorist and bomb stuff go play CS.

Everyone in London and all of the UK really has my condolences and my best wishes.  I am lucky to have never gone through such a tradgedy, and I am still very thankful to this day that my uncle wasn't working on the windows of the World Trade Center towers when the planes collided with them.  Like Scalliano said, I wonder how this event will affect civil liberties in England and probably the USA as well, but I think it's best to square away the damage and the injured first before worrying about that.

Update.
I live 200 miles north of London. Yorkshire is a quiet county, with a mixed population. The water is good and clean from the hills and the air is the same. The people are plain speaking and honest and its the greenest city in europe, I seem to have read somewhere.

Its a bit like the shire from the lord of the rings, hence the name: 'shire and yorkshire'.

We don't get bombs up here much. But 2 at least of these men went to my school (where I teach) a few years ago. they were discribed as 'normal healthy young men' not religous or fanatical in any way. they were into sports and one of the lads familys reported him missing on the day of the attacks, cos he had gone missing.

What had been done to them to make them do this?

Part of the key to this sort of thing is the ability for those involved to blend into society. We see it not only in connection to acts of terrorism, but also as an integral part of guerilla warfare, We saw it in places like Vietnam, and a current example would be the tactics employed by those still fighting with the Allied forces in Iraq.

Where coordinated acts of terrorism such as the one in London are concerned, I am in no doubt that a degree of training/brainwashing would be involved, but you really need to be a certain kind of person to willfully blow up yourself and potentially many other innocent bystanders because you're pissed off at something a government is doing. With the exception of Spain, all it's gonna do is piss them off even more. Just look at Israel.

My message to any would-be suicide bombers is this: Martyrdom is given, not acquired.

This is true, but were they always madmen, or does something just click inside them, and they become madmen? I think some are like that.

anyway...

It has come out that one of these men was a teaching assistant at a primary school that feeds to our secondary school. Thank God he didn't set off a bomb in an assembly of 500 children.

They are still looking for the 'mastermind' but rumour is that hes fled the country to pakistan. How brave..............................................

In about 1850 when the british caught muslims instaed of just hanging them, they beried them with bacon in thier mouths, so they would not go to muslim heaven. This must have put off a few. I'm not suggesting this today mind, But woodsman would.