AS always when such things happen, it hasn’t taken the ‘armchair experts’ long to start laying the blame for the high death toll in the Norwegian massacre on the ‘slow’ response time of the Norwegian police.

Norway is a small country with nothing like the number of police and security personnel that we have here in Britain and other European countries that have a great deal more experience in dealing with terrorist attacks.

And, as the monster, Breivik planned, the huge bomb that he planted in Oslo, was purposely intended to keep the police busy while he put into operation the second (and major part) of his plot – the mass murder of innocent young people attending a summer camp on a small island some distance from the capital.

It is the scum who carry out acts of terrorism who are 100 per cent to blame for the carnage that results – not the police and others who have to deal with the aftermath of their cowardly acts.

That being said, the authorities in Norway (and other countries, including our own) must accept some responsibility for their habitual failure to act robustly against extremists of all persuasions who are allowed to pursue their twisted agendas because of our obsession with ‘freedom of speech’.

That high ideal was all very well in more innocent times – but is totally misguided in today’s world.

Freedom of Speech, like the ridiculous EU Bill of Human Rights, is used and manipulated by our enemies to serve their ungodly ends.

ROBERT READMAN, Bournemouth