MI5 Warnings

[Supermanspants]

AIBU to be feeling really quite uneasy about the news today. Not sure what anyone can realistically do though. I have immediate family living in and travelling around London daily although not the case that London is an automatic target. Worrying isn't going to change anything but am becoming more and more alarmed at what is seeping out in the news.

Whoops.... Wrong place. Will get it moved

We're going to move this thread over to AIBU now.

MI5 want extra powers so they're doing a bit of a selling job. Fine, as long as it doesn't end up being like RIPA which is now being used by people like the BBC and councils to check that you're not illegally watching Strictly, or fiddling the system to get your kids into decent schools. Not really what the legislation was designed for.
I don't mean to trivialise this but there have been terror threats and attacks as long as I've been alive. It's important not to worry too much about it or the buggers will win by default.

Agree with Charlesroi. They want to make sure budget cuts don't affect them, so they have to make sure people feel scared.

Otherwise people may want them to make cuts that affect the military instead of vulnerable people...

Cuts that affect the military?

dies laughing

You do know they've pared that to the bone already, don't you? Defence(and associated budget) is not a vote winner.

It's a weird argument all round.

'We're not going to give in to terrorists by letting them affect how we live our lives BUT we're going to invade your privacy and affect how you live your life to protect you from the terrorists'

Yea OK then

I have t seen the news today, link?

jc pared to the bone? Don't you know a treasury minister somewhere tucked up in his tax payer funded bed in London will agree to find further cuts anyway Don't be letting reality blind you to their career...

I haven't seen the news today. What was it?

I live in London and I honestly don't feel any more at risk than ever before.

Military personnel have been pared to the bone. The budget that bought aircraft carriers (bit no aircraft...) was mis-spent.

But both Tories and Labour want to spend £167 billion on renewing Trident. There's a budget that could be reallocated.

I'm well aware that procurement and equipment budgets were mismanagedand often squandered and that budgetary rationalisation was needed.

However, the cuts have affected personnel and conditions rather than the big ticket items. Savings have been front-loaded (the cuts to regular personnel were made before Reserve numbers reached the required amounts to provide meaningful support, for example).

I am in my forties and for most of my life the terror threat has been high.
As a student in London in 1993 going to my Saturday job
Boss - why are you late?
Me - traffic is crazy there's been a huge explosion or something.

The IRA had just blown up Bishopsgate

What's the news today? To a certain type of person, everyone who they dislike is a terrorist. If not one already, they'll infiltrate groups of their young men with intelligence to goad and produce them. They don't want to, or simply refuse to, make the connection that all the crap they've done to many various groups in the past and present, including their own population, has led them to their lonely, isolated ivory towers where they bemoan the fate of Western civ (which they have killed off only too happily with a succession of world wars).

Yes I am worried. I commute on busy trains. I don't like being miles from DC skne days. But if I thought too deeply i would never do anything. Sigh.