I don’t live in Manchester, you could count on your fingers the number of times that I’ve been there but that doesn’t really matter. It could have been any one of a number of UK cities, Glasgow, Leeds, Nottingham, Bristol, the list goes on. We all feel their pain because it could so easily have been us, it doesn’t take much to imagine ourselves in the shoes of the people who’s lives have been torn apart.
Imagine standing waiting for you child to come out of the concert, you spot them coming out only for you then to see them be consumed by an explosion. Or you’re a teenager coming out of the concert expecting your mum to be waiting for you to take you home but she’s just been killed while she waited. How on earth would you deal with something like that? Yes I know, people in Syria live with that sort of thing all the time, but it’s the same people doing it there as did this to us. Yes I said ‘us’, I know that I don’t know anyone affected by the bomb but because I take my daughter to concerts like this, I feel that I escaped by pure luck.
This has nothing to do with religion, they just use religion to gain power for themselves. It’s just one big con trick, they prey on people in the same way a con man tricks an old lady out of her savings but with vastly greater consequences.
My heart goes out to those people trying to deal with the fallout of what happened at the Manchester Arena. I can’t say I like her music but I also feel for Ariana Grande who I can imagine really has been broken, every time she steps out on to a stage now, she will always have Manchester lurking in the wings.
The media will have wall to wall coverage, life stories of the victims, a blow by blow account of the investigation. I’m not sure I like the intensity of the coverage we’re going to get but I will read about the victims, if only to give some recognition that they deserve to be noticed, paid attention to.
As for the lady that lost her life shielding her niece? Well, she deserves a posthumous George Medal.
