The murder of Alexander Litvinenko in a manner that apparently left a trail of polonium across London in 2006 concerns all of the people who were also present in the locations visited by the killer or killers. It is also something that concerns many other people. It is no less a form of terrorism than that carried out by many other groups that regularly grab our headlines. It is far from clear exactly what happened, the trail of blood from a beheading is much easier to follow and leaves few questions as to how the person was executed, compared to a trail of invisible radioactivity. It appears that our Government responds very differently to states and organisations depending on who authorises the killings and possibly on how important the state is to our own priorities. One can only speculate on the motives for these rather unequal responses, it seems clear that a life is not necessarily a life, or rather one life is not as important as another. Our reaction to nations that wage war on large groups of poorly armed people is also very unequal. We can be sure that while parts of Yemen are being destroyed by Saudi Arabia using sophisticated weapons we supplied, that the response from our Government will be very different to the way they respond to the actions of Syria using Russian supplied weapons on Syrians. Perhaps as citizens we need to simple accept that the world is too complex for us to be expected to have these differences explained to us by our clever political leaders? Or perhaps it is time for a change!