Dear Extremist, If It's All The Same To You. . . .

10 years ago,evil and religiously inspired idiocy formed a near perfect symbiosis, and 52 lives were wiped off the face of the earth. Meticulous, calculated, horribly clear minded. At least in the minds of the perpetrators. Today I walked past Northern Road in Aylesbury, where one Germaine Lindsay, carpet fitter and now infamous lunatic formerly lived. His brain, like so many others, warped and twisted and dehumanised by the insane preaching of extreme Islam. I wonder, is the world a safer place? A better place? I think not. What then, can simple folk such as you and I do in the face of such cretinous barbarism? Well for starters I'm going to walk the dog. Then I think I'll take my amazing wife for a pub lunch. After that I'll do the school run, pick up my daughters, and return to our little home. In short, I will continue with my way of life. I will do the simple things that make us human, and do as much as I can to show kindness and compassion and decency. This to me seems the only correct retort when faced with the extremists of this world. They wish you and I to change, to absorb us into some obscene Borg assimilation. No thank you, I respond with my standard chirpiness. I'll just carry on being me, living the British way of life and doing all the things you'd prohibit me from doing if you could. Dear extremist, you may yearn for your Caliphate, and wax lyrical for the day when the Crescent is flown across every capital on every continent. Whilst this may be your desire I really cannot sign up for it and feel somewhat compelled to refuse your kind offer of brainwashing and mental servitude. And I really think we all just need to keep being us, living out those democratic values which often cause us friction and disappointment, but those which we would be naked without. I love and cherish my freedom, my free mind, my right to live life by my own lights and not under the celestial guidance of a deity that, from the outside looking in, looks just a bit man made. So preach your hate, build your bombs, spew your venomous bile. It's white sound to me, and I'll be ignoring it, and playing my part in making this a world that is peaceable, democratic, and a place where we all have a voice.