Simon Roberts’ post Tomorrow We Enter Paradise features a series of photographs by Cumbria-based photographer Stuart Parker who saw some young Asian men in the Lake District and was reminded of police surveillance images of a similar group which were used in court when Mohammed Hamid and others were convicted of terrorist acts. Parker started photographing the locations, and other Lakeland scenes, and building up a series of allusions to Islamist murders in London and elsewhere.

What makes the post interesting for me is that I’ve blogged before about how I had photographed Hamid at London’s Speakers Corner. This spot is as redolent of English tradition – free speech, political and religious liberty – as the Lakes are evocative of Wordsworth, cream teas and another, somewhat twee form of Englishness.

So then, does my series of Speakers Corner photographs constitute, to paraphrase Parker, “actual and metaphorical links between Hyde Park, Iraq and Afghanistan”?  Do Parker’s images really allude to our supposed whole or partial guilt for murder, or merely tell of certain bloodthirsty, bigoted individuals’ inability to appreciate the beauty of the country they are lucky enough to live in?