So the IRA is back to its old tricks - no surprises there then. What I am surprised at is that their antics should be allowed to interfere with people's everyday lives throughout the country.

For example we have had this week just one instance of how organisations like the IRA and the authorities manage to keep us in the dark over just about everything. Marton Street was coned off at the beginning of this week - the bollards I understand being placed there by the police. Very frustrating for the visitors to the city who (as has been well chronicled in the past) have a major problem getting somewhere to park.

A phone call to the police station reveals that the street has been cordoned off in the interests of safety as there was a heightened state of security because of the atrocities committed recently in London. But what good does blocking off Marton Street do? One would imagine it is to stop terrorists parking car bombs and the like outside the police station but why? Do the police know that the station has been targeted by terrorists? If it hasn't why has it been blocked off? If it has don't you think it would be nice of the police to let us, the poor public know, as we are just as likely to be on that street as the police? People might choose to alter their route into town. Parents may choose to keep their youngsters away from the area. The police may imagine that they are avoiding a panic by not issuing a statement on this matter - but people aren't thick. They know that there's summat' up and they can well work out for themselves what is going on.

It does seem strange when the IRA appears to be targeting soft civilian targets, rather than military or official sites that the police can afford themselves the luxury of protecting themselves in this way when the rest of us don't have a prayer. The other galling thing of course is that the threat of action is enough to disrupt the economy and the everyday lives of people living and working in town centres like Morecambe and Lancaster and the one thing I do know is that the people of this city (and indeed this country) will not be pushed about by cowardly, malevolent no-marks hellbent on causing as much disruption as they can.

Indeed it's time the whole thing was stopped now anyway. We have the manpower and the technology to wipe the whole lot out once and for all. Terrorists from either side of the bloody fence should be sought out and wiped out and let the rest of us get on with it - nobody will miss them that's for sure.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.