While not trying to laugh at the bombing in London or the fact that people were hurt, the article that jmh's link brought up made me smile. For absolute meaningless quotes in reporting, it has to be a masterpiece of stating the obvious. Consider this:

Mr Fry said: "We have been predicting, since Christmas, that the mainland, and London in particular, were to be subject to terrorist attacks. This was one of those attacks."

No it wasn't, it was an attack in downtown Dublin ...

and

The BBC's Laurie Margolis was on the roof of Television Centre and saw the explosion go off.

He said: "There was an explosion and a huge bang."

Mr Margolis is clearly an acute observer of events. The reporter who jotted that down and included it in the story also has a keen eye for detail. I'm so surprised that a bomb caused an explosion when it went off and that there was a large bang associated with it. I thought the IRA had mastered those new-fangled silent bombs. Someone ought to clue them in, I think. Or get them to write stories for the BBC, anyway; they couldn't do any worse.

And finally, this gem:

Police said they were keeping an open mind about those responsible.

Are they really? I would have thought that those responsible might be guilty of something if they were responsible. Or has the Met just become totally ambivalent about arresting (or not) those responsible for terrorist attacks in London?


The idiot also known as Capfka ...