Poor old Ron and Pen, just trying to help

Here’s the problem. An Asian bloke gets on to the Tube holding a bulging Lidl bag with wires sticking out of it. I don’t know if it had the words ‘large bomb’ written in Magic Marker on the side of the bag. Anyway, a little later, it blows up, and lots of people are injured. Later again, surprise is expressed that he had been able to get through with his primitive bag of tricks. We are continually exhorted to be vigilant on public transport, so why wasn’t he apprehended? Did nobody think it looked a bit suspicious? I have the feeling we know the answer to that. Just think of the howl-round, the furore, if the man had been pulled over and it hadn’t been a bomb. Like the Muslim chap who was evicted from a flight last year because he had mentioned 9/11 and felt compelled to take legal action. And so that’s where we are, right now. Pinned to our seats by over-sensitivity, as the train enters the darkness of the tunnel, next stop paradise.

Both of the men so far arrested for last week’s outrage were the foster children of two elderly, respectable, caring, decent and honest mugs, Ronald and Penny Jones, from Sunbury-on-Thames. According to a neighbour, they were gutted to read that their charge may have carried a bomb on to a Tube train full of commuters. Better gutted than decapitated, I suppose, or incinerated. Apparently Ron and Pen had experienced a certain amount of trouble with the young man suspected of planting the bomb. We don’t know what sort of trouble. Wandering around chanting stuff in Arabic? Perhaps they thought it was just a difficult phase he was going through, like acne or heavy metal. ‘They just need to be loved,’ one of the Joneses told the press, adding, ‘It’s so rewarding… They are grateful to be safe.’