London does not feel safe

[thinkiamgoingcrazy]

The Westminster attack, now the London Bridge and Borough Market attacks .

The horrible rise in knife crime .

And the knife crime / murders are not remote. The 18 year old son of our ex neighbours was chased and stabbed to death about 2 years ago, about 10 minutes drive from where we live. About a week ago a woman was shot and killed on the same road that my H has a shop on. A few months ago a young boy was stabbed to death outside a neighbouring secondary school - the students at my dcs' secondary school were offered counselling.

MyCalmX - being a Londoner is about Keeping Calm and Carrying On.

Which was what that guy was doing.

Do you seriously go to pieces every time there's a terrorist attack anywhere?

How on earth do you function on a daily basis? I assume you never, ever watch the news, because terrorist attacks, war, illness etc, would just be too much for you to bear...

There are over 8 million people living in London.
There are over 4 million tube/train journeys made there every day.

It's worrying but there's not much we can, short of all moving to Weston- super-Mare or Leamington Spa.

Ever big city is dangerous, crowded spaces are a target everywhere.

Am I worried - yes. Will I move out - no.

Yes I'm glad you got all that about me elgwyn because I think your comment about being a Londoner is fucking skewed.

What on earth was 'out of order' about MrsDV'd comments?

Her black sins ARE at risk from 'over zealous' police officers (note: not ordinary, good, non racist, under control police officers) and there are stats to back up her fears. Numbers of innocent black men who die in police custody, relative treatment of black and white suspects, relative sentencing of black and white convicted. Which won't be of concern to her as her sons are not criminals, except to demonstrate institutional racism.

Then seperately (not comparing the police to....) she fears for racists. Again: direct racist attacks. It was actually the Soho, Brick Lane and Brixton bomber...

And she said these things to contextualise our daily risks and fears. Not to compare knife and gun crime with terriorism.

Terrorism is very frightening. Of course it is. But just as people quote the daily risks we take on our roads as a way to manage and contextualise our fear, some people live with other daily concerns.

My mother is flying in 2 weeks from London and I'm worried sick. She's staying in London for 2 nights and I've told her no site seeing.

YANBU at all.

Angrylady, I can understand your worry, but it would be a great shame if your Mum missed what London has to offer.

Where is she flying to?

Angry lady boobs

Do you forbid her from her going in a car? Especially on a single lane A road?
Because that is much much more dangerous than sight seeing in London.

I agree with mrsDV regarding who is actually most at risk.

Banning your mother from sightseeing as a previous poster has suggested is just absurd.

www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/the-psychology-of-risk-perception

This is a short useful article on the psychology of risk perception.

Angrylady even if your mother had been out in London last night the odds of her coming to any harm would have been vanishingly small.
She is in far more danger every time she crosses the road.

I was in London on Friday with my 3dcs - walked around felt safe and we had a lovely time - walking across Hungerford bridge and the Southbank to Waterloo - so many people and great atmosphere - security presence there but not OTT - and we will go back once they break for summer too.

No sight seeing? Not much point in coming here.
And elgwyn I would be carrying the whole bottle of gin.

Oh for crying out loud - some people are their own worst enemies. Someone saying they wouldn't let their mother sightsee in London at all, FFS!

I work just a few minutes away from the location of night's attacks and will be walking past the scene every day I go to work.

I can't imagine how some people get out of bed, if they think going out in London is that dangerous. Do they simply not get that it's a huge city?

The biggest jokers are those in the US who claim that we need is wider gun ownership to solve our problems, forgetting that guns kill over 15,000 people a year in the States (over 3,500 of whom are children). I hope Angrylady's mum doesn't live in the US. She must spend every single moment terrified, if so.

James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree.....

"but I do have an extra sense of urgency that I don't think I have if he was white or a girl (thinking knife crime and police stop and searches)"

"also at risk from over zealous police officers and anyone wanting to get revenge on brown people."

By the use of and these statements both equate the threat to young men of a minority ethnic heritage from criminals engaged in knife crime and criminals engaging in racially motivated attacks with interactions with the police.

"there are more specifically racist police officers than specifically anti-racist police officers".

It is likely that the police has broadly the same number of specifically racist officers as society in general. There is likely to be a similar proportion of nurses, teachers, care workers, nursery workers who are racist as there are police and those occupations all place people in positions of power too.

Last night I watched what looked like hundreds of police officers run towards unknown danger to protect the public. Those police officers said goodbye to their wives, husbands, children yesterday evening and went to work to keep us safe. They are almost all just ordinary people, living ordinary lives and I think they deserve our support.

I totally disagree with your interpretation of grammar there, LostWithinTheHills.

Nobody could be anything but in grateful awe of the police response last night.

That does not mean that the concerns of certain communities are not valid in the face of other risks, in other circumstances.

Because there are terrorist attacks going on

I think I'd make a distinction between ones that take out five people and ones that take out 50, or potentially 500. And even in the latter cases, I wouldn't feel unsafe. Something that could take out thousands or tens of thousands I would maybe worry about, if I thought it was likely to happen.

I think if people feel unsafe now, that's not the rational part of their brain talking.

I once looked at the history of terrorist attacks in London, trying to clarify my memory of the three times I personally had my flat windows rattled by IRA bombs going off. (On one occasion I had passed close to the location of the bomb 20 minutes before it went off.) I was surprised to find that there had been one or more terrorist incidents a month for year after year, around that time. (Most did not lead to any deaths, for example often there would be warnings and evacuations.) My memory of that time, living in London and going out at night after work often, is of a happy time in which I was not worried about terrorism.

I was thinking the same thing Firesuit

I worked in central London throughout the IRA terrorist attacks and far more people were injured and killed than the situation we have now.

However, what we didn't have was social media. I can't remember much about it all aside from being outside Harrods when that one happened and being annoyed when all the bins were taken away and you had nowhere to put your rubbish. Aside from that it was business as usual.

I don't recall a huge backlash against ordinary Catholics or ordinary Irish folk either...........................

London is safer than it has been for a very long time.

Of course you are free to disagree with my interpretation of grammar.

I have not denied the concerns of certain communities, I have simply objected to the police being viewed as a threat equal to violent criminals.

I also simply objected to Nationcreation's assertion that a significant proportion of the police we watched running into potential danger last night are racist.

Don't want to turn this into a terrorism top trumps but I was under the impression that more people in London have been killed by the ISIS sympathisers than the IRA? Most definitely IRA have killed more people in total but that's largely to incidences in N.Ireland. I certainly feel more anxious in London now.

user Here's the definitive list. I think the IRA spread their attacks far more widely but certainly more people died due to terror attacks in UK in 70s and 80s than now.

For London I think it's still true that more people were "injured or killed" by IRA. Either way, we are safer now as per the graph below shows quite clearly.

www.datagraver.com/case/people-killed-by-terrorism-per-year-in-western-europe-1970-2015

Sorry forgot the list!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain