How about some more bizarre paradoxes, since no one can come up with anything? Since the ludicrous BBC won't use the word "terrorist" it must be time for introspection and diagnosis. According to Mr Anthony Browne in the Spectator of 26 July 05, "the terrorists were in one sense very British: self-loathing is the national disease". That's quite a corker, I wonder how he's going to work that one out!

We might ask what turned ordinary Muslim youths into mass murderers. Or we might wonder how a religion of peace can inspire people to terrorism across the world.

"The Ludicrous BBC"

Oh, I don't know. You might well ask. But for a start you might wonder how an adult can ascribe much of anything to a man's religion. If you were to discover that large numbers of serial-killers were raised in various Christians denominations, what help would that be? Most religions serve up all this pious stuff about being nice and so on. As far as I know, nobody's religion has commandments like "Go, that ye may do bad things, Lie, and ruin people's shit", apart, of course, from the horrid belief system of certain politicians and journalists.

Most of the piece talks about young people in the UK failing to appreciate their own history and culture, no doubt a valid point. But it seems to be true that young people no longer study that drivel anywhere because it is in nobody's interest to teach it. Kingsley Amis wrote some things about that a good while ago. Theodore Dalrymple wrote some others more recently.

You might well ask: So? Oh, right. Some young people in the UK are Moslems. That + their acquired British self-loathing = terrorist acts. Or maybe I've over-simplified something.