IT is only a couple of weeks since I wrote a column about the terror attack at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester.

And here we are again, only this time the horror struck in London.

Frankly, I don’t want to write about another terrorist attack. There is nothing I can say that hasn’t already been said.

I was in the capital at the time of the London Bridge atrocity.

Some friends and I had gone to a concert. One of our number admitted beforehand that she was a little nervous given the recent attack at the Manchester Arena. She wasn’t alone. We went nonetheless, not just because we didn’t quite believe it could happen again so soon, but because we can’t let these monsters stop us from living our lives.

So it was with huge sadness that, as the gig at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire ended, we learnt that more people had been killed and injured just eight miles away.

I don’t want to write about another terrorist attack because I don’t want there to be another terrorist attack.

How we achieve that, I don’t know. But I do know our best chance is by standing together, regardless of faith, colour or creed.

Regulating a force for good — and evil

THE internet’s a great thing and I can’t be the only person who marvels at how we ever coped without it.

If we need a factfile on a rare disease to go with a story in the Adver, we look it up online.

If we need to know how to get from A to B, we call up an online map.

If I want to know the time of the bus, I don’t bother wandering down to the bus stop to look at the timetable — I simply whack my start point and end point into Google and lo and behold, through the magic of cyberspace I know not only which number bus I need to get at which stop but what time it goes, how long it takes and even how long it will take me to get to the bus stop in the first place.

From shopping for groceries to keeping in touch with friends to watching movies to checking how to spell things (it’s years since I picked up a real dictionary), we use it for everything.

However, not everyone is watching YouTube videos of cats falling off worktops and looking up how to make a lobster thermidore.

New figures from the NSPCC reveal that the number of cyber-related sex crimes against children has quadrupled in Wiltshire in the space of a year.

The fact that 44 such vile crimes have been recorded in 2016/17 compared with 10 the previous year is perhaps partly down to improved awareness and more people reporting it to the police.

However, it remains a fact that such abhorrent acts and images are very much a problem in our society.

The NSPCC tells us that across the whole of the UK, 15 child sexual offences were committed a day via the internet during 2016/17. That is a staggering figure.

Like everything, the internet has its uses for good and for evil. One person will use a knife to prepare a meal for a loved one, while another will use it to maim or kill.

Most of will use the internet to buy tickets to a show or check the latest news headlines, while others will use to commit the foulest acts of depravity regardless of the suffering inflicted on children as a result.

In the aftermath of the London Bridge attack at the weekend, Theresa May said there needed to be a crackdown on the web in order to halt the terrorists who have caused bloodshed in our country three times in as many months.

She says technology firms aren’t doing enough. But the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 requires internet service providers to maintain a list of visited websites for all internet users for a year. Police can access this browsing history without any warrant or court order.

It seems to me that if the authorities have the means and the power to know what paedophiles and terrorists are up to, the fact that they are not intercepted before they can cause real harm must come down to one thing: lack of resources. Let’s hope our next government does something about that.

X marks the spot where you can help

SO the big day has arrived, the day Theresa May thought she would up her majority in the House of Commons and have a hefty mandate to steer Britain out of Europe.

Although it looks as though she may not be as successful as she was hoping, especially since she revealed the lack of existence of the money tree to a hardworking member of our crumbling NHS.

She’ll be telling us that Santa Claus doesn’t exist next.

Whoever floats your boat politically, whether it’s myth-buster Mrs May, geography teacher Mr Corbyn, holier than thou Tim Farron or Europhobe Paul Nuttall, there’s only one thing to remember here, and that is to vote.

You can’t complain about whoever is governing our country if you couldn’t be bothered to wander down to the polling station and put your X next to one of the names.

This country’s having a tough time and faces even tougher times ahead.

We need it to be peopled by those who care, those who are willing to stand up against terrorism, hatred and bigotry and those who will do their part to build a happier, safer future for our beleagured isle.

You don’t have to take part in Parliamentary debates. You don’t have to run towards danger in order to save others. You don’t have to take to the streets waving banners.

All you have to do is vote. There’s no such thing as democracy if nobody participates in the democratic process.