looking at the heartbreaking photos of the victims one thing that comes through poignantly is this sense of London as this incredible multiracial city... a random selection of people on their way to work (ie. most likely none of them tourists) and it's so striking how few them are Anglo-Saxon in that narrow sense... people from the Indian sub-continent, from Africa, the Far East, from Turkey, from Eastern Europe and all over the Continent...

it flashed me back to coming home earlier this year to do a grime story: the host of the Stratford Circus rave calling out to the audience to raise their hands if they were from Nigeria, from Kenya, from Antigua, from Trinidad & Tobago... Roll Deep's variegated line-up of third-generation Caribbean and mix-race faces... hearing Eastern European tongues on the street... the polyphony of accents on the tube...

post-imperial chickens coming home to roost, an almost-United Europe, and, more sadly, various overseas conflicts sending refugees in search of a haven ... all this has made London into a remarkable hub city, a cosmopolis...