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

The current National Terror Threat Level in UK is set as SUBSTANTIAL.

This means that a terrorist event is likely.

Who do we expect this threat to come from?

I'm guessing its not the Catholics, or the Quakers, or the Jews, or sikhs

so, when the police and government hold back on details, it stands to reason that people will guess who the perpetrators are, and let’s face it, they are usually right.

Back in the 70’s during the troubles in Ireland. If a bomb went off, nobody ever said “oh I bet it was football hooligans” they universally said, probably IRA, and they would be right.

same thing these days, just a different gang.

So what was the point of your post here? Did you really expect people who were spouting off on Saturday to come here and give us all their 'reflections'?

I don’t think anyone ever described the actions of Michael Ryan, Thomas Hamilton.or Raul Moat as terrorism. Then again, they were white.

I think we need to look at knife attacks and drug use. Drugs seem to have been decriminalised with any parliamentary discussion, let alone act of parliament. Cannabis is too often described as a benign hippy love drug, when it can cause severe psychiatric health problems. Whether that is in anyway relevant to this case, I wouldn't like to speculate, but I can smell the cannabis in the streets in the nearest major city. There was even a man smoking a joint under and oak tree at the weekend. Harmless, yes, but indicative of how ubiquitous illegal drugs are.

Al Qaeda is a jihadi organisation. The IRA also produced unsavoury literature. I think we are agreeing with each other. He as obsessed with violence, not wedded to one ideology, so was allowed to slip through the net because of the narrow definitions used to deem whether he was of interest to a certain part of our state bureaucracy.

I had to stop reading the threads the other day because they were making me feel sick.

Sadly, none of the racists will reflect on how wrong they were, let alone apologise for their behaviour. Most of them are probably still in denial about the facts and thinking it's all part of some grand conspiracy/cover-up.

We need to stop thinking of these people as reasonable and rational human beings. They are fuelled by hatred and prejudice, and facts don't matter to them.

They do it after every incident. They did it after Liverpool and again this weekend. They all go quiet when the truth comes out, or you get the complete racists/loonies that say the security services and police are lying about the perpetrator. I have seen that already that one of the witnesses worked for the security services when interviewed on sky news.

Its just horrific.

No, it's not. Not everything that is terrifying is a terror attack. It is motive that defines a terror attack. Random violence doesn't count.

He did not have jihadi manuals. He had ONE Al Qaeda manual and also had information on the IRA. He seems to have been obsessed with violence in general not beholden to any one ideology. You are engaging in the same kind of misinformation referred to in OP.

Yes! I'm a Geordie and Newcastle supporter who lives in London (I don't go to matches now) so I am slightly biased in that Newcastle fans are not shitty but it was the most ludicrous comment.
Oh, it was in response to me they made that comment. Ridiculous.

No it isn’t, unless you’re doing it in the service of a political or religious ideology. Terrorism doesn’t simply mean ‘causing terror’.

I didn’t post anything. I waited for the police update on TV and I came off social media because so many people were acting as judge and jury and using this as an excuse to be racist towards a range of minorities.

Did you view the Plymouth shooting as an act of terror? Or the man in Liverpool who drove his car into pedestrians or all the US school shootings?

The reality is in order for something to be a terror incident it needs to fit specific criteria (a main one that it is in service of a political ideology.)

Some loon on a train who wanted suicide by cop does not really fit that definition.

I agree people knee jerk put everything into the terror bucket if the individual is of a certain national origin / race but that does not mean the official definition of a terror incident should change.

You may be right that it is that simple, but I still wonder whether we are missing something with regards to those who are a clear threat to public safety because of a likelihood that they will terrorise people. For example, the Southport murderer was deemed not to be a terrorism threat, despite jihadi manuals, because he had a variety of different literature from a variety of different unsavoury sources and wasn't ideologically committed to one of them. Consequently, he was able to slip through the net as not a terrorist threat, when he was clearly a terrorising threat. Even those who commit dreadful acts on behalf of terrorist organisations are often recruited because they are already susceptible in some way. There is a chicken and egg relationship between the two. There is no evidence that Valdo Calocane was ideologically linked to anything, yet despite a known psychiatric history, he had been allowed to get away with being in public without taking his medication. It should not take a triple murder for him to be prevented from terrorising the public with knives. Yesterday's attacker apparently stabbed someone in the face on the DLR on Friday, but was free to terrorise again.

He was white but not British.

When you go round stabbing people on a train its definitely a terror attack.

The police arrested two people though one turned out to be an innocent bystander. So it's true they didn't technically give out wrong information.

It was the fact that the reports were of two people arrested that made me wonder how it could not be terrorism. One person - lots of possibilities from mental health to domestic violence.
Two people - suggests some level of planning or organisation.

Ok - have just seen the comment I was referring to has been deleted as racist. Good.

Some MNers were very strident that it was two asylum seekers that did it and it was a terror atrocity.

I wonder if they are still stridently insisting that’s the case?

I think the other guy got arrested simply because he was black too. Which is not a good look for the police.

The head teacher of Rudakabana's school has said she was asked by social workers when he transferred to her school to modify her notes about him. She had said she had never met a pupil so preoccupied with violence. The social workers were unhappy about a black boy being stereotyped. This sounds like the same dynamic as the one at work in rape gangs, and an unintended consequence of multiculturalism.

@Libellousness - just a quick Google if massive stabbing attacks brings up many including April 24 Marcus Monzo who killed a young black child, but was in fact white.

Colour has nothing to do with it and it is WRONG to mention this and is not a common denominator.
The definition of terrorism has been laid out by others which was interesting - or it’s a case of evil versus mental health issues.

Mentioning colour is racist.
XY chromosome seems to be the main link from what I can see of all these attacks.

I didn't see the posts, so this is my first comment.

I don't think you can blame people for considering a terrorist attack. The incident was attended by terror police, and they were involved until such time as it was clear, and they have now declared it not to be.

So, it's the default with our front line too, in this sort of incident, to look at all possibilities.

Exactly, I’ve faced this battle when my DS was little, it’s brutal and incredibly complex
add in the potential for parents for whom English may be a second language., lack of any adequate services for child mental health support in this country, and some perceived shame around men admitting to mental health issues