There are no Muslim terrorists

I spent 12 solid hours yesterday editing comments as they poured in to thisisplymouth. Wading through so much filth can really wind you up.
In the end to distract me from the barrage of extreme racism I had to resort to extreme measures of my own - origami.
OK, it may seem fairly trivial, but believe me it's hard to think about just how evil some people's minds are when your trying to carry out a tricky reverse inside mountain fold along a line you won't even make for three more steps.
And the end result? Well, people are still racist, but at least I have a small green paper rabbit to look at.
At least 20 per cent of the comments that came in yesterday had to be taken down, and of course those making the comments have no idea why and get very indignant about it. The real curse of racism is that the people holding racist beliefs honestly feel them to be reasonable.
Of course some comments are worse that others. Those comments ordering we immediately round up all foreigners and execute them are rare, while those saying our country has been diluted by people intent on harming us are more common, and the most common are those saying 'send them all home' and 'Enoch Powell warned us this would happen'.
The real problem does come down to a lack of integration, this ghettoisation which is more prevalent in a city like Plymouth where the communities of people from minority ethnic backgrounds are smaller.
How many people in Plymouth spend a significant amount of time with Muslims? Very few. So of course there is misunderstanding, fear and hate. If you don't spend time with Muslim people your only view of Islam is what you have been told by people who can never understand it or, worse, may want to give you the wrong impression.
Many of the comments taken down imply or outright state that Islam is an aggressive faith, bent of world domination, that violence to infidels is at the core of the credo.
The truth is the exact opposite. There are no Muslim terrorists. No-one who commits acts like 9-11 or July 7 can call themself a Muslim. No-one who would use a lonely and broken individual to commit acts of terror is a Muslim. They are not considered Muslims by anyone inside or outside that faith.
I freely admit that I myself have spent little time with Muslims. I grew up and spent 18 years in Leicester, but my friends were Sikhs and Hindus. Same again when I spent four years in Peterborough and again when I spent three years at college.
I grew up counting Rashpal, Gurpreet, Mayur and Akash as my friends. While the Mooken brothers made my life hell in the playground.
I ate in the temple with Rashpal's family, enjoyed the sweets Gurpreet's mum made. But I have never spent significant time with anyone from a Muslim background. (Unless you count the Muslim guy called Innocent my cousin briefly dated, who my dad accidentally fed pork - we didn't see him much after that)
But because I grew up and have spent a lot of time in a fully integrated city I find it 'more difficult' to think in a racist manner - it just doesn't come naturally.
All those saying we sould send the Muslims home, the only answer is the opposite, invite all people into our homes.
The objective or terrorism isn't to blow things up, it is to instill terror. If your reaction to these attacks is fear and hate, the terrorists have won.

Bloody public transport

Bloody public transport. Here I sit, blogging from the slightly grubby and very cramped seat of a Number 12 bus - the only form of transport which seems to think the most direct route from Torbay Hospital to Paignton is via the centre of Torquay.
40 minutes?!? I can do Paignton to Plymouth in half that (police traffic officers please ignore that last remark).
Insult to injury the bus timetable told me a bus was due a minute after I strolled up (lie) and that they came every seve minutes (lie). The fact three buses following the exact same timetable passed in the opposite direction while I was waiting for this one seems designed by fate, or Stagecoach, to induce a stroke.
And then two turn up at once. I thought that was just the punchline to a Jasper Carrott joke.
To top it all off my epic voyage home is setting me back £2.85. So Gordon Brown can continue his pogrom of taxing us motorists back to the Stone Age while the oil companies mainline cash direct from our accounts but it seems there is no alternative - buses are even more expensive than driving and about as customer-friendly as a Barnstaple B&B.
So why do I find myself traversing the Queen's highway with the hoi polloi?
As previously reported my other half is expecting our second child. Not due for another couple of weeks but when the maternity unit sees a lull in the tidal wave of economic migrants "coming over here, using our NHS"(damn, I've come over all Daily Mail) I guess they decide to induce.
Having got a lift in to avoid filling out the second mortgage applicaion necessary to fund a day's parking, I was planning to wait by the bedside all day for the action to start, watching £2 a minute TV and contracting C Diff, but when the midwife heard I'd been up all night uploading election coverage to thisisplymouth she took pity and told me to go home for a nap. Either that or she heard I was a journalist and wanted me out of the way. Ah well, by the time this bus gets me home at least the new arrival will be old enough to drive back and pick me up.
In other news, I'd say even more exciting news but the other half may kill me, thisisplymouth has rocketed up the chart to become the third largest website in our nationwide group, and has just been shortlisted for a prestigious website of the year award.
Well must go, a bloke with a dodgy grin, a Morrison's carrier bag and a smell of yak is eying up my palmtop and the bus is just pulled upo in what is either Paignton bus station or one of the slightly-less gentrified parts of Albania.