so an attack is imminent

[myoriginal3]

AIBU to be a little freaked, living in London?

DH commutes into London 5x a week inc 2 tube journeys. Obviously he's still going, what's the other option ? Give up work? Stop living life? In that case, they've already "won".
I do worry and ask him to be extra aware of his surroundings but life really must go on.
It's a sad sad world we live in but it's full of nice people too, I just try to focus on that.

May will be exploiting this for political reasons, Just as she's slipping in the polls. Shameful

What an awful thing to write. The intelligence agencies recommended this course of action, she simply approves, with the rest of cobra, and then announces the decision. There is a risk the bomber was working with others and other strikes may be imminent. If the intelligence agencies didn't agree the decision you could be sure 5000 army personnel would not be being deployed onto our streets without the heads of our armed forces coming out and stating it wasn't necessary.

Many people would have been involved in that decision and it will have been done for good reason.

*Police/army/politicians have their own agenda and do like a situation of fear and control. Security services are paid to lie professionally and there is no reason to believe they have halted 1,000s of potential incidents. They are invested to justifying their own existence.

You seem to be invested in peddling conspiracy theories.

Am not reassured by seeing large numbers of police army hanging around armed with guns AFTER the atrocity. It's worthy of a Monty Python scene.

We do not know what information they have. If this is indeed a coordinated series of attacks, they will be working to stop the next event.

*bold fail. The first paragraph should be bolded.

Chamonix1 my DD is a nurse at GOSH and just texted to say she's arrived safely but that the tube was crawling with armed police. which I find reassuring.

We've been on high alert for the last 3 years, haven't we?
This changes nothing for me. I'm no more frightened or scared.

only a few weeks ago a man was arrested carrying a number of knives in Westminster and the same day three others were arrested all have been charged with terrorist offences

How many thousands of people were walking around Westminster at that point in time

Millions of people in London were going about their everyday lives yet these people the security services found out (how?h) and had to observe to get an understanding of what they are up to before they arrested them

We only know a fraction of what the security services do to keep us all safe

Sadly, there's always currency in keeping a population cowed after horrible events like yesterday. The security services and political leaders always have their own agenda.
It would be very naive to think otherwise!

no investment in peddling anything.
Just being realistic and sceptical when posters claim 'we have excellent intelligence capability' etc - who told them this exactly? How do they judge that? Security services tell politicians what they want to hear and politicians tell us. Nothing conspiratorial at all. Just good sense.

I have a family member who works in the security forces. They did knife and hand to hand combat training refresher the day before the Westminster attack.

Now, do I believe that there is a conspiracy theory and that "they" knew there was going to be an attack, or do I believe that the training was booked months in advance and it was an unfortunate coincidence that it took place the day before the Westminster attack?

Lazycrazy
Yes, I can imagine. Sad that we need them, reassuring that we have them!

There are independent groups who rate armed forces against certain criteria. Britain is consistently rated very highly. Top level.

They are professional. They are physically fit, well trained and have the equipment they need. Plans will be in place.

OH and I are just about to commute in to a large metropolitan city to work. Life goes on!

We have no choice. I will be thinking of all those families today who have lost loved ones, and giving my 16 year old DD a massive hug this morning.
I wish people would stop all this self indulgent nonsense.

Bluntness it is indeed an awful thing to write,- especially as there's more than a grain of truth in it!

This whole 'beware the 22nd' thing is bollocks. It conveniently cherry picks a few attacks that happened to fall on the 22nd, ignoring other dates.

timeline of terror attacks (express link)may not be of comfort but shows the general scatter of dates.

Remember the weekend before last all the papers were running with there is going to be a wannacry2 released on that Monday? Yes, there could have been, but there wasn't.

We have many large cities in the UK. People can't hide from them all. Courage is saying 'yes, I'm scared, but I'm going to do it anyway.' Nothing we say or do will help those families and friends who are utterly devastated after this latest attack. Refusing to go places certainly won't help them.

As for poor unlucky people who happen to be in the same city for two different terror attacks. I once had a bit of a phobia about beaches and wouldn't go on holiday by them. The reason was that for two summers in a row I had ended up having to help resuscitate a woman collapsed on the beach. One made it, the other died as I held her. It took me a while to convince myself that I was just flipping unlucky. (or maybe lucky?) to have been there on both of those occasions.

My dh and I are meant to be going to a concert in London in December at 02 arena and I don't even want to go anymore

You just have to get on with life. These things sometimes happen in clusters, more often it's an isolated event. It's getting the risks into perspective. Lots of us have no option other than to live and work in big cities and we'd go mad if we overthought every 'risk'.

It was stated on BBC news that this is the first time in ten years we have been at "critical".

On the tube now, no different from normal?

My dh and I are meant to be going to a concert in London in December at 02 arena and I don't even want to go anymore

Why not? It's ages away.

I don't really get what people mean when they say be vigilant. Terrorists don't have signs on their heads. If I got off the tube every time a shifty weirdo got in I'd never finish a journey.

I don't really get what people mean when they say be vigilant

I would imagine it would be keep an eye for suspicious or unusual behaviour, unattended bags and the like.

We live in the back of beyond (rural Scotland), but are due to attend an even in central London in a few weeks (in an historic, landmark building that I would say must be on somebody's terrorist target list. It worries me, but we will still be going. Life must go on.
I worry too about my DS who currently lives in zone 2, tubes to and around zone 1 daily. Glad he's due to return to Scotland soon although I realise an attack could happen anywhere.

Stiff upper lip" is bullshit, it was used to not only get people through the horrors of war but also the likes of covering up abuse, slums, child abuse, turning a blind eye to all sorts of shit. It isn't an admirable quality.

quite. Isn't it just a few months ago that Prince Harry spoke out about talking about feelings etc etc and how his mental health had been impacted by not doing that and there were eleventy billion threads about how this was the right thing to do

Now we've all just to shut up, buck up and move on? Not to be allowed to express any fear or concern. Really?