Remember Manchester

I'm not going to do a report this week. I’m going to talk about Manchester.

In the short time that I’ve been doing the Sustainable Futures Report on a regular basis we’ve had attacks in Paris, Brussels, Nice and Berlin. This time last year Member of Parliament Jo Cox was murdered in the street. And now 22 people are dead in Manchester and 59 have life-threatening or life-changing injuries. Of course we need to step up security, but we need to do more to understand why people think it is acceptable to kill other people. We need to understand how those who organise, help and assist the attackers can live with the consequences of such attacks. 

We must not forget that there are wars going on in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Nigeria. In some of these our forces are involved. In many of them our weapons are used. Almost every day civilians - women and children - die in these conflicts. Our governments must protect us not just by dealing with the consequences of terror but, and this is far more difficult, by dealing with the cause.

Next week things will be back to normal for the Sustainable Futures Report. The people of Manchester are defiant and Manchester will soon be back to normal. But things will never be back to normal for the families, friends and victims of the Manchester attack, and of all the rest. We must never forget them.

I’m Anthony Day.

That’s all.