Today’s television news viewing has taught me at least one thing: these ‘experts’ are nothing of the sort. Mostly, they’re giving personal opinions which, on balance, are no more accurate than yours or mine.

Now, for those of you sighing at these words and thinking, ‘Gary, you wally. Do you mean you’ve been believing them up to now?’ I have to reply, sheepishly, that, yes, I do often defer to talking heads. Especially when they seem so sure of themselves.

But as myself and Mrs M watched the various reports we heard the following, apparent, motives for the terrorists:

“They want to create division within the UK”
“They want to create panic and terror”
“They intend to destroy our way of life”
“They want to provoke an authoritarian response to their actions”
“They are acting to impress foreign Muslims”
“They are trying to drive a wedge between British Muslims and the rest of the people”

And so on.

I think the tendency of some of these commentators is to imagine what might be the result of this outrage and then assume that was the intention.

Since I am as expert as the rest here’s my take:

This was an act carried out by people with a visceral hatred of the west, who wanted to hurt us in any way they could, who wanted to show that they could, who actually could and who, therefore, did.

I honestly don’t believe it was more complicated than that.