The Death Of One Is A Tragedy..... .....the death of millions just a statistic. I have been trying to remember just how many people died in the July 7th London bombings. I think I have got it now. It was 1. John Charles De Menezes. According to nearly all the media I can find, BBC, ITV, Sky, The Times, Telegraph, Gruaniad and Indy and a hundred odd politics blogs, he appears to have been the only victim. He was murdered by the police, so they say, for a lugh, on purpose, by trigger happy gun toting fascists, by accident, because of bad intelligence, because he looked like an Arab, or a Paki, or because he was wearing the wrong jacket, or hat, or because he had to forgotten to wave a small banner proclaiming "I'm not a bomber." Anyway. 1 is far easier to remember than 52, and it is easier to make a point about a few members of one family than it is about the hundreds and thousands touched, affected and grieving about the 52 murder victims killed in the atrocity. Let's not even mention the injured, 700 people, we surely can't expect the public to be able to grasp a number so large, except as a statistic, so let's get back to banging on about one bloke. Why is it that almost our entire media seems to have turned so vehemently on our police force when there are probably more Al-Qaeda operatives at large in the UK ? Of course is it important that the chain of events that led up to the death of Mr Menezes are properly investigated and understood, that's properly investigated, not trial by media to improve your newspaper's circulation, or to keep people glued to the news on tv whilst you sell advertising for flash cars and supermarkets. If one more person was murdered because the resources of the police had been diverted into investigating the death of one man (as opposed to 52), this would be a travesty. The death of John Charles De Menezes was terrible and shocking, but no more so than the death of Helen Jones, or Shahara Islam, or Behnaz Mozakka, or Jamie Gordan, or any of the 48 other people murdered on July 7th.