Reading the news about the letter bombs sent to various motoring agencies this morning, I noticed a lack of the T word, terrorism in many of the reports. Sounds like a cast iron case (in my opinion) for the use of such a word.

Now I don’t want to make unfounded suggestions but if letter-bombs were sent, say from an Islamic source, to say a governmental department (of which capita and the dvla are not far from being) the newspapers would be swimming with headlines such as terror threat, campaign of terror etc etc. Now I am not trying to make any sort of judgement, simply pointing out the perceptual difference that would occur if the targets were slightly different. People are still being injured, maybe the bombs are not intended to harm, but then again even the act of attempting to send such devises constitutes terrorism so that doesn’t really count.

But I guess seeing as it’s seemingly a (white urban male) nutter with a grudge against driving laws then I guess it doesn’t qualify. Which begs the question, what exactly is terrorism? But even weirder is the complete lack of any suggestion this is terrorism, so what is it about the story that made this simply a crime and not an act of terrorism? The perpetrator (whom we know nothing about), the targets (as mentioned effectively governmental departments) or the size of the explosives?