BBC2 - 777: One Day In London

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Are you watching?

:(

I am watching, heartbreaking...so sad watching the parents talking about their children they lost

I think this is the second BBC documentary I have seen about 777.

Just watched it. I can't stop thinking about the man crying at the end because he feels guilty he survived. I cried most of the way through. Beautiful accounts of loved ones.

So so sad.

I was a quivering blob of snot and tears by the end.
It was beautifully made.

What an absolutely beautiful and devastatingly moving programme. I was in pieces. I can remember every minute of that day so clearly.

I remember that day. It was quite warm here in the Midlands. Shocking, upsetting. People full of courage. Such lovely people. Heeta's Father kept her bag. :(

I watched. I thought it was really well done. I was the other side of the bulkhead from one of the tube bombs and was hugely lucky to survive relatively uninjured. There isn't a day that goes past where I don't think about what happened.

I was supposed to be at a meeting at the BMA that day. At 9am. I could have been on that bus. Dd2 was ill though, she was only 7 months old and I didn't want to leave her. I remember being on the sofa with her asleep in my arms watching news 24 and thanking god over and over.

I watched. Am a blubbering wreck now. Such a beautifully made programme. I love the BBC.

My dd was six months old, and we had gone out of London the day before and stayed with a friend. We lived literally right at the back of king's Cross station, and so weren't even sure we would be able to get back home as the staion was cordoned off. I remember the drive through London at 11p.m. and apart from a few stragglers walking home the streets were empty. It was incredibly eery, I have never seen anything like it.
I only caught the end of the programme but it was very sad and moving. I carried dd down to the station to leave flowers a day or so after the bomb, everyone was crying and she was trying to smile at all the people, and looking confused .

I went to Birmingham for a meeting that day and was on the same tube line exactly an hour before the Kings Cross bomb exploded. I've thought about it every day since as well - anyone living in London could have been on those trains and that bus. It was an incredibly sensitive programme, but I wept and wept for that poor father who suggested his daughter walk to the bus stop before Euston

I watched and thought it was extremely well made and sensitive. I thought the way the camera paused on other survivors' faces while another person was talking was a very good way of showing how connected everyone was and how the testimony of one had reverberations for the others. I cried all the way through - found it very hard to watch. The most heartbreaking bit for me was the woman who had seen a photo of her dead son on the front of the Daily Mail and had kept it - that made me angry as well as sad. No-one should have to go through that. Martine, the woman who lost her legs, is the one in the Paraolympic seated volleyball isn't she?

I watched the first half hour. Going to watch the rest today.
I remember being in hospital with DD and the first we knew of it was when DDs consultant told us. His relatives are in India and were ringing him to see if he was caught up in it. We're 90miles away so thankfully we weren't.

That picture was appalling wasn't it. Dreadful for that poor mother.

I'm not going to condemn the publication of that photo, and other gruesome details like the anecdote from the man half-blinded by shrapnel from the bomber's shin bone, because if you do, you have to condemn the producers of this excellent programme for reproducing it and the boy's mother for keeping it.

I guess they asked her permission and she agreed with them that it was an important part of the story, as was watching her cuddle and smell his clothes.

It contrasted her attitude with the attitude of the other mother who shredded all her son's letters. She was equally right but her decision will be very hard, perhaps harder, for many people to understand.

We have no right to second-guess the feelings of the people actually involved or to say how they should behave. The job is just to report respectfully, which they did.

On balance, most journalists got it right. We need to know these things, if only to have something to talk about now.

But I doubt the mother gave permission for the photo to be used in the first place. The Mail put that picture on its front page before it could have possibly known who the person involved was, perhaps even before they knew he had died. She gave permission for it to be shown in the programme, and for her testimony to be filmed, but for all we know the photo appeared without her knowledge.

I guess what I'm saying is the photo should not have been used by the Mail. It was used in a completely different context in this programme.

I missed the Aldgate Circle Line tube by minutes only because I'd decided to pop into M&S to get some lunch - otherwise I would have been on the train but at the rear of the train (bomb was in the front, I think). I then walked through the commotion of the city that morning not knowing what had happened until about an hour later when news reports started to confirm bombs rather than a massive electrical outage.
I suspect I'd be a clothes cuddler rather than a letter shredder if my DS was killed, but hope never to be in that position.

We were in Italy when it happened, I had just popped out to the nearest supermarket to get some bits for lunch when my path took me past a TV shop, just saying that Britain was under terrorist attack. Gotta love those Italians and over-reaction. It seemed an age before I could get a mobile phone call through to England to check what was happening.

The Italians were wonderful. Everywhere we went that day they wanted to make sure we were okay, offered to let us use their phones if we needed to get in touch with anyone, there was a steady stream of visitors to the nearest English church, and at Gay Pride many of those marching wore Union Jacks with black armbands on their sleeves. We were overwhelmed by the response we had.

When we flew back to England the airport was depressing and the enormity of it sunk home a little more. Those passengers who were dark-skinned or obviously Muslim were all being looked at suspiciously by fellow passengers. I think that was the day that the Muslim=terrorist stereotype really began to become real and my heart went out to the poor law-abiding families who were being glared at, simply for having a belief system that was claimed by the terrorists.

The photo was used in many papers, not just the evil Daily Mail, because they were reporting on a major public event.

I'm not a photographer but I've reported from such events. The photographer would have seen someone injured who was being worked on. They clicked and moved on. What's he or she supposed to do? Not take pix of anyone in case it turned out badly? It was a bad situation all round and needed to be reported.

There will have been more distressing pix because that's a photographer's job. I've been told some very distressing stories. Papers choose to publish or not to because that's the picture editor and editor's job.

But they can't do their job and you can't know things if journalists at the scene think: 'ooh, that's a bit distasteful. Better not.'

There was a big hoo-ha over pix of the bus because on closer inspection from readers with the time to pore over the papers, it turned out there were body parts in the pix.

I really do not believe those pix were chosen deliberately. People couldn't recognise what was in front of them in a hurried situation. Not surprising because it's hard to understand what a bomb can do to the human body unless you've been there.

The person half-blinded by the shinbone fragment and the firefighter who was baffled at seeing survivors in their underwear explained that. The London Underground worker complained about photographers taking pictures. That needed to be said too. However, the photos needed to be taken and the story told.

Most journalist try to be respectful. We are people too and if you behave like an unfeeling monster there's always the possibility that some big fireman will punch your lights out.

But hindsight is always a wonderful thing.

Well it's an age-old debate isn't it. But it's one thing to take photos/report stories in the public interest (as this event obviously was), and another to see your son dying on the front page of national newspapers. I'm sure journalism courses have used this sort of thing as an opener to debate about the ethics of journalism (I'm not saying it is unethical by the way, just that I personally have issues about pictures of identifiable people being used to sell papers).

The body parts picture is a different issue, because as you say 'I really do not believe those pix were chosen deliberately. People couldn't recognise what was in front of them in a hurried situation. Not surprising because it's hard to understand what a bomb can do to the human body unless you've been there'. But a photographer could recognise what was in front of him/her when he/she took the photo of the man we're talking about (I want to call him by his name as it feels very disrespectful to be discussing him in this way).

Yes it wasn't the fact that it was used by the programme that angered me, but the fact that the woman said that she'd picked up the paper and only then realised it was 'her boy'.

This is very close to my heart and I couldn't watch it.

I worked for the underground at that time. I had had a M/C on May18th and returned to work on July 5th, at Russell Square, my shifts were "earlies" that week. A few hours after starting, I realised I had returned to work too soon for me, and I was sent home.

I should have been working on the morning of the 7th. At the station where the train had a bomb explode in our tunnel. When I heard the report that there had been a "power surge" at two sub stations, I knew that couldn't be the case. I tried ringing my colleagues and couldn't get through :(

I should have been there. I am great in a crisis and feel incredibly guilty to this day.

Can I just point out that, while I have the GREATEST respect for the emergency services, they, understandably, had difficulty in reaching the areas affected as quick as they might had the circumstances been different. The underground staff were the first to witness the horrifying scenes, administer first aid. My supervisor and colleagues entered the train to utter carnage. I can't repeat some of the scenes relayed to me as they are far too distressing. Underground staff often have a hard time of it by the public. Particularly about wages. But this is where they come into their own as they are trained to react quickly and professionally to things like this, hopefully never again. Just though that was worth pointing out though of course every single person, whether they be ambulance, police, fireman, nurses, fellow travellers, members of the public who ran to Great Ormond Street to fetch stretchers, the shopkeepers who filled trollies full of drinks and anyone who helped, ALL deserve respect.

I no longer work there but I shall be texting my former colleagues on the 7th as I have done for the past 5years, to say i'm thinking of them.

I think that came across very clearly in the programme Shakey - two of those taking part were underground staff and it was evident that they were the first on the scene and did what they could in what seemed like an unbearably long wait for the emergency services. There was one station manager in particular whose testimony was incredibly moving. I remember thinking during that awful time in the weeks afterwards, and I still think it now, that 7/7 really did show Londoners at their absolute best.

Oh that's good to hear MissM thank you.