Manchester Arena.

Awful – as I type at least 19 dead and 50+ injured – both will probably rise. Lots and lots of kids involved. Terrible.

As you say, I doubt that Dave was there, but the disruption and street closures would have made life very difficult for any stranger to the area.

Disasters sell newspapers so the Press will leap on its back. The one thing I really hate is any intrusive interviewing of survivors or grieving friends/relations. I think that stinks and I will boycott any newspaper that gets involved in it.

As you say Steve report just the facts, but I find it irritating that we cover things up but US officials release information well before the UK. They stated that this was a suicide bomber hours ago.

Breaking news is that there has been an urgent evacuation of the Arndale Centre.

Sadly the psychopaths of the UnIslamic State were hoping for the effects that their brain dead ‘brother’ scum has produced, – fear and loathing. The press will not have disappointed them with their over hyping of whatever ‘stories’ they can dig out or failing that make up. (I have run Press Centres in a distant past life, I could see the event and compare to fantasies.)

I thought long and hard about responding at all. However, I am not at one with some of what you said ED. In general our official public officials are supposed to report only established facts based on evidence, a concept increasingly unfashionable in the alternative facts, (or should that be phacts) USA. Others may be less constrained. To my mind no one covered up (though the cheap shot is easy) there were many reports of the incident, useful detail is the missing part. Then there is the question of useful to whom?

I do not need to know how many arms and legs were blown off or how this that or the other person was affected, I do know the effects of PTSD and I have heard how to make those effects worse.

I am with you ED on interviewing those intimately affected. I find it deeply abhorrent and offensive. They may need to give unvarnished witness statements to aid investigations, but in private, sympathetic surroundings. Filling press and TV with endless mindless loop tapes of their suffering aids no one, it subtracts from the value of life.

Details of the method would have taken time to clarify, suicide or unlucky bystander? I am with slow and established rather than shout from the lip and get it wrong with a page 200 retractions.

Well the callback was useless. A conversation with a new doctor who has a very thick Middle eastern accent and really has no clue about my condition.

Ed the terrorists we have to deal with atm ARE Muslims. Everyone is skating delicately around that as a matter of Political Correctness. The problem is that the Islamic community in this country is either too afraid or just disinclined, to help the authorities by giving their names and activities. I count several Muslims as friends, one of whom is very close. I have a niece with a husband who suffered a paralysing stroke and can do very little for himself: her neighbours, a young Muslim couple, help my niece with caring for him. They carry him into and out of the car, they are fine people and I am quite aware that the majority of Muslims are like that. Unfortunately, the fundamentalists are not and they are growing in number.

To be completely OTT: you don’t believe that a Quaker or a Salvation Army soldier was responsible, do you? I know we wait for ID on the perpetrator of this terrible atrocity, but which other belief system would he follow?

We have a social cancer in our society. It is time for the West, the Russians and Chinese to get together and cut it out.

I did referred to the Unislamic State psychopaths. This was based on reports of anti social media crowing by some claiming to belong to that group. Now if you feel calling something ‘un’ means throwing dirt at the real form: well we disagree. I am aware that the language is constantly being modified and bizarre ways, perhaps is should say pray tell me does the prefix ‘un’ now mean definitely is?

The fact that most of the previous atrocity performers have been found to be suffering from serious mental health issues and to have lived a previously far from blameless life, adds weight to my side of the statement. One point at possible issues is whether they were always psychopaths or somehow modified as such is an open question.

I am also aware of the Hillsborough and other crimes by senior staff who sought to shovel blame away from them, I find it an unacceptable though fashionable slur (indeed close to the original abuses) to use it as a justification for lauding at best unverified possibly dodgy reports from overseas sources.In any case what difference does unseemly speed make? Would an early possibly wrong report resuscitate the dead and repair the injured?

If you feel that lessons will not have been learned from that very sordid past businesses where the truth has finally been drawn out I am very surprised. However, to start with police and other official bodies were involved with the historic messes for which accounts had been fabricated, put crudely they had a dog in the fight.

I am totally unable to see any such angle to this case or are you suggesting that the bomber was somehow connected to an official source?

I realise that this is the age of phacts and dumb conspiracy theories, but to hint that any and all delays in clarifying details suggests a cover up brings odium upon the proposer. I have read Bob’s moving account. Most of those officially connected would have been in Bob’s situation and, like Bob, will pay the possibly heavy future price. Very few if any  had either the time, need or inclination to cook up a story and I find that a damaging and hurtful implied slur.

Steve, I agree that it was fortunately lowish number, but for those affected it was a 100% result. If it was a suicide vest type they may have misfired, not set it off correctly been too close to something that blast protected others and so on. It is unlikely to have been a grenade, they are not easy to come by, but if he (was it even a he?) was unsure or worried they might have held whatever close to their chest anyway. You must know, explosives are strange things with queer blast paths that can do the oddest things. Too much conspiracy and theory is creeping in, it is time to stop.

Personally I use the term UnIslamic and my other favourite Psychopaths for the Devil as interchangeable terms, the latter can also cover such as Timothy McVeigh. The talk I heard today was that the Psychopaths club were crowing on so called social media about killing kids.

Terrible.

And now there are reports that ‘anti social media’ is putting up false reports of missing children culling images from across the world to stir the pot a little more.

Bob, I made the error of reading one account from a homeless person who normally tried to collect from those leaving a performance, wrong time wrong place. Another poor person who will have another pressure for him to live with in his mind.

You can see the lowest of the low, a hoax warnings caught out as post event fabrications due to time zone issues.

Yes the social media barons are doing their bit for fear and loathing.