Westminstenders: Frozen

[RedToothBrush]

Boris Johnson was empty chaired by C4 with a block of ice.

The Conservatives went mental and have threatened to look at C4 broadcast remit.

This is illiberal and anti democratic.

Journalists are supposed to hold power to account on behalf of the public. If MPs don't turn up then they can't be held to account.

They have a duty to show. It's not good enough to avoid scrutiny because it might make you look bad. That's the whole point.

The contempt with which Johnson holds the press and public is reprehensible and you should be concerned whatever your political alligence. It allows corruption to fester without consequence.

And to then threaten C4 because they do their job in line with their responsibility as a broadcaster is alarming.

This is how authoritarian dictators work.

Then we have the papers announcing the man’s identity the following day. What legal procedure has been followed to establish his identity? Did his family identify his body overnight?

If he was on release from prison then his finger prints/DNA would be in the database so no need for formal identification I would have thought

What I would like to know is why, if as reported, a passerby had already wrestled the attacker to the ground, it was necessary to shoot him. It must have been at point blank range. Why not arrest him? The suicide vest was apparently fake and even if it wasn’t once he is overpowered there’s no particular benefit to killing him - the vest would still have to be de-activated either way.

Rules of engagement in UK are usually if there is a perceived immediate threat to life

A suicide vest is an immediate threat to life

It takes a split second to detonate a suicide vest

The man (in a suicide vest) posed an imminent threat to life

The police made the decision in a few seconds - they had no way to determine in that moment whether the suicide vest was real or fake

They made a decision, based on their rules of engagement in a moment

Additionally, the police were alerted presumably by the people inside the building - and would have been told that he had a suicide vest on & was going to blow himself up

(His own words apparently, in the building, when he showed everyone his suicide vest & told them he was going to detonate it)

I agree with you Red

Sorry your son was in the vicinity Born. It's DHs regular route and unusually for a Friday I actually used LB about an hour before too -but as you say sadly it's la plus ca change -in London.

Also did people see that one of the primary brave meme bets if the public was a Polish chef at the hall who bravely tackled the terrorist with a narwhal tusk after the terrorist threatened to set off the ( fake) vest.

Those EU citizens who the ConservatERGs are delighted to have made so unwelcome.

mobile.twitter.com/RespectIsVital/status/1200572209464532992

Just that Matt Hancock hustings video is awful isn’t it! He actually pushes the moderator at one point!
(Link up there for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet)

He makes his 50,000 nurses claim while getting mildly heckled, takes offfence at the heckling and starts yelling about anti semitism and Jeremy Corbyn to a chorus of boos and jeers. Spectacular.
What makes this all the more awful is that this part of his constituency has had awful problems with the availability of gps and gp appointments. Yes, in the Health Secretary’s own constituency. He also described the problems as due to “irresponsible patients”. Charming man!

LP members knew it was going to get bad because of the change Corbyn is proposing I mean this is trying to roll back 40 years of neo-liberal damage and prepare Britain for the future as more AI take jobs but Jesus didnt realise that the only thing the Tories want to talk about is Corbyn , no policies really, no depth, no plan except for get brexit done and were not Corbyn

And while it plays to their older Tory base and middle aged Brexit party base Im not sure as the campaign goes on that the message is going to be that effective, on 1 side you have the Tories aiming nothing but hate at Corbyn and the broader party while Corbyn is just trying to peddle his message of hope while not attacking them as people

This is so true

Rules of engagement in UK are usually if there is a perceived immediate threat to life

I’m aware of all of this because I’ve read it all before. It’s trotted out every time.

However a man in a suspected suicide vest who is already overpowered can’t detonate anything. So there was no reason to shoot this man in this instance.

And it doesn’t address the identification issues.

I agree that the police can't spend vital seconds checking if a suicide belt is real, when the threat of mass murder is imminent

They had to shoot him to prevent him detonating the vest and / or moving to where he could kill more people if it went off
Much easier to disarm a device after the person wearing it is dead

Particularly if someone has already stabbed people, so they already know he is violent

It makes no difference if he has MH problems, because police should decide to shoot on the basis of what risk a suspected terrorist is,
rather than make moral judgements about whether there are extenuating factors like MH

This is the sentencing remarks of Mr Justice Wilkie that includes Usman Kahn. The sentence he received was overturned the following year to 16 years meaning the 30 year Terrorism notification period was dropped.

www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Documents/Judgments/mr-j-wilkie-sentencing-remarks-r-v-chowdhury.pdf

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/usman-khan-know-london-bridge-20993921

We don't know how securely he was held, whether he genuinely couldn't move a millimeter - and whether the polcie could be sure of this

As for ID, if the police are 100% sure - if known to them, they'll maybe have fingerprints & DNA - then keeping the public informed is reasonable

Once he was held the police can hold him down securely. They were standing right over him when they shot him according to the photos.

ID was pretty simple, he was wearing a tag. If that suicide vest had been real and had killed several people, the police would be slated for not taking action. They can’t win.

There will be an inquiry into his death, there always is. Photos taken by the public can be deceptive.

I’m aware of all of this because I’ve read it all before. It’s trotted out every time

Have you been armed, and on a duty which may require you to use your weapon?

You have a split second to make a decision as to whether there is immediate threat to life

A suicide vest is exactly that

It gets 'trotted out every time' because it is fact.

However a man in a suspected suicide vest who is already overpowered can’t detonate anything

Overpowered by civilians
Who had to be removed from danger

He was shot dead immediately the last civilian was pulled clear

Rightly so

This is why he did not have time to detonate (if it had been real, which was unknown in the moment)

Thinking about the Two Minute Hate (and even Hate Week) that so often comes round when Corbyn is mentioned, I had a quick look yesterday for things which didn't feed into it.

I can't remember whether this has been posted here before, but I found it an interesting view on the "Labour is riddled with anti-Semitism" narrative.

www.patheos.com/blogs/writingfromtheedge/2019/11/as-a-british-jew-im-not-fearful-of-a-corbyn-government-but-im-horrified-at-how-antisemitism-is-being-used-against-him/

The bit I find telling is
"Further analysis of these figures, and other data, and their comparison to survey data of antisemitism in the UK population as a whole, has been carried out by statistician Alan Maddison. The upshot is, there’s less antisemitism in Labour than you would expect to find in the UK population as a whole (which is already among the lowest in the world). In fact, reputable surveying in 2017 by Jewish Policy Research, showed that antisemitism was more prevalent on the right and far right than on the left in the UK."

And yet panic fear about how a Labour government will mean Jews have to flee the country is clearly influencing otherwise rational and stable people. It's been clever politicking; and I find it rather sinister.

Why automatically assume the police were in the wrong ?
Why not consider whether he was still struggling, moving and might have several suicide switches, e.g. maybe even refusing to open his hands

In such a situation, I don't want the police to risk the public in the slightest, just to give a terrorist every possible chance

This bending over backwards to find some way to criticise the police and give the terrorist more chances is the kind of decadent liberal agonising that repels most of the public
and makes them rate the Tories so much higher on issues of security and defence.

ID was pretty simple

ID is never simple vis Menenzes. Nor is connecting a dead body to an identity.

If the police ever have to tackle a suspected terrorist - who has already killed or injured people - I certainly wouldn't want them to dither around if that terrorist is near me or someone (else !) I love.

If the police aren't 100% sure he can't press a suicide switch, then they should kill him

A live terrorist can be interrogated and provide valuable intelligence, so it's not as if it would make sense to have a policy to shoot when there is no risk at all.

When they're wearing a tag, their fingerprints & dna are already in the system then I'd imagine it's pretty straightforward tbh

My policy as a distant observer is to wait for the facts ,
rather than to jump in and immediately allege the police got it wrong whether over shooting him or his ID

If we learn later there were any mistakes, then that is the time for criticism, if justified and to develop measures to avoid them being repeated

The suicide vest didn't have a sign on it stating 'don't shoot me, this is false' and even if it did, the best course action to take is to err on the side of caution and disbelieve it.