Robin and a London bus

Robin and a London bus
Originally uploaded by athens2004blog.

Yes, my prolific posting spell continues with a shot of Robin waiting at the bus stop about half an hour ago to catch the bus home. This is your average London bus - red, double decker and all that. Not the quaintest of bus stops though!

Dawn, absolutely take your point about the roads being out of use making it difficult to get aid to the New Orleans area, but I spoke to a pal of mine in Austin Texas today who was saying that the Austin police helicopters are still in the city - you'd have thought they'd have sent all the helicopters in the area to the disaster zone by now. There have certainly been plenty of distraught people on the news complaining about how no aid has arrived whatsoever, so it's not like those helicopters wouldn't be of some use.

And, again, take your point about the hugely foolish people shooting at the helicopters - but I'd say that although the authorities were encouraging people in advance to come to the sports stadium to escape the tornado, they don't seem to have thought very hard about how they'd look after/police them when they got there, so mob rule broke amidst some awful conditions.

Terry Ebbert, the head of New Orleans' emergency operations, has already said the slow response by the wider authorities has been a 'national disgrace' - so it's not like I'm the only one who thinks the response has been rather slow and the problems poorly anticipated (people were, afterall, well aware that the city is below sea level and that there was a very good chance it would flood).

But, I'm sure we're all very much agreed that they need to get relief there as soon as possible and thank goodness that seems to be starting to happen. I really hope that they can regain control of the city and help the thousands of desperate people who are in such awful trouble,

Anyway, my Austin pal was also telling me it's a holiday weekend over there in the States this weekend - hope that amidst these awful scenes you folks manage to have a peaceful weekend.