Britain's national threat level has been scaled down from 'Critical - an attack is expected imminently' to 'Severe - an attack is highly likely'.
LONDON: Except for a greater visibility of police at train and underground stations here, there are little signs of any anxiety across London even though eight suspected terrorists last week threatened a repeat of the July 7 bombings through different tactics of car bombs in London and Glasgow.
Four suicide bombers had targeted three underground trains and a bus on July 7 2005, killing 52 and injuring hundreds. On the second anniversary of the fateful day Saturday, London could not have been more normal.
There is awareness of how close London and Glasgow came last week with mass terror, but that awareness has overtly not affected the usual hustle and bustle of metropolitan life. The visible police presence is marked by easy interaction with the people at train and underground stations.
Britain's national threat level has been scaled down from 'Critical - an attack is expected imminently' to 'Severe - an attack is highly likely'. Security is tight this weekend not only for the second anniversary of July 7, but also because of the Tour de France cycle race in London and the finals of the Wimbledon tennis championship.
A low-key event has been planned to mark the second anniversary - Mayor of London Ken Livingstone will attend a flower-laying ceremony at the Kings Cross station where wreaths will be laid at 8.50 a.m. GMT, the time of the first explosion in 2005.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has announced that a permanent memorial to the 52 dead would be installed in Hyde Park. The memorial was earlier planned at the Tavistock Square, where the double-decker bus was bombed, but the venue was changed after families of victims preferred Hyde Park.
Official agencies have taken several steps to upgrade emergency responses to terrorist attacks since July 7, 2005, but latest research shows that equipment that allows emergency services to cope in the event of a terrorist attack is seriously flawed.
The Guardian reported Saturday that the research is expected to question the efficiency of the airwave communication system worth three billion pounds, commissioned by the Home Office, which should allow all the different emergency services to communicate with each other.
The paper reported: "(Research) by the London assembly's 7/7 review committee suggests the system is erratic in certain buildings because of metal in the infrastructure. Researchers have been told that the radios won't even work in some police stations and in some retail outlets.
"The fault is said to raise questions about their effectiveness underground, where deficiencies in communication between the emergency services called to the 7/7 atrocities were most extreme".
Meanwhile, it has been revealed that more than 120 victims injured in the July 7 bombings are still waiting for full compensation. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) has not yet resolved a fifth of claims made in relation to the attacks in London in 2005.
A spokesman conceded that 126 of 614 cases were still outstanding, amid claims survivors had been forgotten and were struggling to deal with such an impenetrable, unwieldy compensation system.
On the eve of the bombings' second anniversary, lawyer Thelma Stober, who lost her leg in the explosion on the Circle line train at Aldgate, told the media: "We are the forgotten people."
The 35-year-old has received 33,000 pounds - the maximum value for the loss of a limb below the knee - but is still trying to get compensation for the rest of her injuries.
She told the Evening Standard: "I have got to the stage where even though I am a lawyer and I am used to dealing with large documentation and complicated forms I am so fed up with it."
She added: "I would have been better off if I had been knocked down by a bus or a car."
CICA dismissed the idea it had been waiting on cases for two years as "very misleading" and said applications were even now still coming in. A spokesman said: "There are 126 out of 614 outstanding according to the latest figures we have but we are still receiving applications".
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