Leave it to politically correct English school teachers to come up with this one.

Instead of failing an exam or a class, a student would instead be commended on their ‘deferred success‘. No Johnnie, you didn’t fail at all. Don’t look at all those other students laughing at you, they’re just jealous because they all passed, but you were the only one to have a deferred success! Oh lucky you.

The London bombers today certainly know how those exam flunkies feel. No path to paradise. No 70 virgins. No nothing. Not just one, but all four of the bombs failed to detonate. Complete abject failure deferred success.

Now, I’m not trying to make light of what happened in London yesterday, or more correctly, what could have happened yesterday; but it does give one pause for thought. How could yesterday have happen? How could terrorists, who have trained long and hard in Pakistan and Afghanistan, have four bombs that all fail to detonate. Sure, you could imagine that suicide bombers probably have a failure rate of around 25-30%; so, to have one or two fail, could be plausible. But to have all of them fail? What are the odds?

You and I may hate terrorists and their ilk, but they are anything but prepared and well organised. This, does not seem to follow the same pattern. What pattern is that? Terrorists want to spread fear through death and destruction. Yesterday, was spreading fear through the perception of weakness. Like saying, gotcha! We could have killed and maimed more people, but we didn’t. Fooled you!

My personal opinion, which matters little, is that one of the two scenarios will explain yesterday:

1. A copycat group wished to spread terror and fear through the capital by emulating the first attack.

2. A less organised, less capable group who doesn’t have the resources or knowledge of the first group, tried to follow the same attack, only to have their plan fall apart through disorganisation or confusion.

A lot of what I am basing this on is eye witness accounts of the how the bombs were spread. One witness reported seeing a man throw his backpack into a train just as the doors were closing. Also, the bus driver reportedly found the backpack that blew up on the bus by itself. In both cases, the carriers of the so-called explosives were not willing to die for the cause.

This does not seem to follow the same M.O. of previous attacks. While there is some speculation that the Madrid bombs went off with the aid of mobile phone-enabled devices, this again does not carry the same hallmarks of a well planned attack. al Qaeda goes for the spectacular, throwing your backpack into a closing door gives you the impression that the bomber either chickened out, or the primary objective was blocked or the plan somehow fell apart.

In any case, I hope and pray that the terrorists have more differed successes in the future.