Anyone like to reconsider what they posted about the train attack on Saturday night?

Especially as it seems that several of the men who stepped in to protect people were Nottingham Forest fans i.e. football fans

Of course they won’t

I think my point was more about the erratic behaviour rather than anything about skin colour. Do you know for a fact that there was an opportunity to contain this man that wasn't taken? I haven't seen or read that anywhere.

But there was no indicator it was a terror attack. So no we are not agreeing.

What does the police not being able to track him (if he was even alerted to the authorities) have to do with being called racist?

Maybe they were trying to find him in that interim period.

I know people will look back on hindsight but tracking one person across the London and broader UK rail network is likely to be a mammoth task.

You know the law doesn’t allow mentally ill people to just be retained willy-nilly. There needs to be just cause and it’s not about “not upsetting the Mumsnet Guardianistas.”

They need to have just cause same as with people who are not mentally ill.

There is too much knife crime for the police to take each one particularly seriously

I haven’t commented yet but I do wonder if there will be awkward conversations to be had about why he was still free on the transport network to stab another 10 people when we now know he had already stabbed another person on the docklands light railway in the early hours of the morning on the same day. Was anyone working tirelessly behind the scenes to trawl through hours of CCTV to apprehend him after the first stabbing more than 16 hours previously? Or was that not considered an urgency because it only involved one victim? Under those circumstances I think it’s going to be difficult to say this couldn’t have been avoided.

I don't think the definition of racism has changed? It's simply that more people feel emboldened to express it these days?

Actually as the dust settles

A hero guard who protected passengers and took hideous knife wounds for them.
A hero train driver whose swift thinking and communication skills raised the alarm, got the train diverted to a platform and had police ready to deal with attacker and emergency services on site.
"All men are bastards?" Fuck off.

Geordie knife wielding thrusts? Shame on you.
"I hope it's a white brit" - you are scum

yeah, the issue is what counts as racism these days. The word is bandied about as freely and as meaninglessly as the word transphobia these days, often referring to issues which aren’t fuelled by racism at all.

That political party are the ones stoking the anxiety and fear. Nobody is scared of a migrant or a boat.

Calm conversations are getting us fucking nowhere. More scolding and making racism and xenophobia absolutely unacceptable for me.

I think the difference though is that there are people not just assuming its a terrorist attack (with good reason, because as people have said, initial reports were two people involved, and that emergency services were being supported by the anti-terrorism police) but are then spouting all the "send them back; burn the hotels; its the boat people" stuff that turns into vile racists rants.

I wonder if he can claim for the psychological effects of not only the attacks but being wrongly arrested. There's also the tasering, dangerous thing to do. Poor Man begging them not to do it.

People are anxious, concerned and fearful. That has been going on for ages - fear a soviet attack, then just as that drifts away it's all quaeda , 9/11, 7/7 and reading about other islamo fascist attacks. Then we have COVID - will we all die? Well it was not quite as bad as all that but... Oh I forgot the credit crunchity munchity. Then Daesh in the middle east, north Africa and sympathisers, Ukraine was and cost of living crisis.

Ohand what people see every night as small boats arrived. Yes, there are far more legal migrants coming in, yes legal.

Unemployment, fears that grooming gangs were not dealt with for a perceived fear of upsetting minorities. Councils taking down some flags but afraid to upset other communities.

Added to that a political party fanning the flames and offering a (dog whistle) solution.

The true guilty parties - the global elites, the Uber wealthy and parts of an establishment who are happy to see the "little people" eat one another as long as they continue to thrive.

I think information came out remarkably quickly tbh. They can hardly release names and motives immediately without investigation can they? Thankfully they didn’t given one man arrested was not involved!

No, but as defrazzled said, I would like calm conversations and for people from all sides to just generally stop the pigeonholing, labelling and namecalling.

I didn't see those threads either. Nor would I ever want to.

It sounds like this attack was carried out by a man with significant mental health issues. He was also a black man. Obviously these kinds of mental health episodes can occur with somebody of any race, and do. The question here would have to be whether there were any opportunities missed to intercept this man and get him secure before he carried out the attack. I hear there was something with him on DLR earlier in the day. Was there more the police/mental health services could have done in this instance? Is there more that needs to be done to work with people with significant poor mental health who could be a threat to others (or themselves) so it doesn't get to this kind of point?

Very scary incident though and my thoughts are with all of those affected.

I think we have to be careful about both racism and accusations of racism.

I standby my post which said that I think and have thought for a long period of time that we should have ID cards and that these should be used when booking train travel. I was accused of saying "xenophobic rubbish" which I found very strange - particularly as having lived in another country for a number of years that was the practice and as a non-national I had to use my passport as I did not have an identity card.

So in answer to the OP yes I think there were some very racist comments but not all were and we as a society need to be careful of when making an allegation of racism as that makes people feel they can't voice their opinions. This then makes people more likely to turn to political parties who say that "people can't say what they think".