Two Minutes' Silence On Thursday - Is There Really Any Point?

Heard about this already of course. There will be a two minutes' silence on Thursday at noon to honour the victims of the London bombings last week. Just had the email come round work telling us about this.

I can't help asking what this actually achieves. I think a greater mark of respect would be to do something really useful. Set up some kind of project for the good of the community - you could let the families of the victims suggest ideas. Volunteer for projects that are for the good of the community.

Hold a big multi-cultural awareness event to show that a wedge won't be driven straight through the middle of the community. Or go down to your local ambulance station, hospital, fire station or police station with a big box of chocolates and just say thank you for doing a really good job.

It used to be that one minute's silence was enough when something really horrible happened. Now there are different degrees of horrible. This was two minutes' worth of horrible, the tsunami was three minutes' worth and the death of a Carribean footballer was one minute's worth. Maybe it's respectful, but it doesn't achieve anything much.

If I have a famous death that many people will want to mourn, I want you all to hold a minute's laughter, and then go and give a big box of chocolates to someone you have underappreciated. Then you can all go and build a thirty foot high statue of me in solid gold.

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