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.

I don't think we should be criticising the police here either. There was a man with what looked like a suicide vest threatening to detonate it.

You couldn't tell from the video that he was potentially wearing a suicide vest but the actions of the people in the video are certainly consistent with that.

Either way, the police will have known who he was, because he was an offender attending a criminal justice conference as a delegate. This isn't another de Menezes case.

This isn't another de Menezes case.

There should never have been a first

I’d also like to see why the police has been able to determine it was a terrorist incident so quickly.

Just spitballing here, but I think the explosives strapped to his person & his own announcement in the building where it started kind of led people to believe he was a bit of a terrorist

I'm struggling to think of a situation where one might not be a terrorist in spite of a suicide vest, knives bodgetaped to hands, the murder of 2 people, the injury of others & the threat to detonate yourself & those in the vicinity

I'm sure a perfectly rational & reasonable alternative explanation will present itself if I just look hard enough though... 🙄

FWIW, we give the police special powers in the UK. (Carrying guns for example). We also give them the trust to use those powers for our safety and security and not their own ends, or to aid and abet political masters.

For those powers, and to earn that trust, they need to be honest, transparent, open to investigation, and show they are capable of learning, improving and adapting.

I think that's a fair statement. Not to some, of course - either way.

Ash Sarkar
@AyoCaesar
·
1h
The BBC are allowing themselves to be treated like mugs. Impartiality my arse.

Surely the response from all parties should be that police have a split second judgement to decide if there is an immediate threat to the public/police officers, in this instance they were correct as the man had already stabbed several people and was wearing what looked to be an explosive device.

He was a terrorist. He killed 2 people. He is now dead - good!

I'm struggling to think of a situation where one might not be a terrorist in spite of a suicide vest, knives bodgetaped to hands, the murder of 2 people, the injury of others & the threat to detonate yourself & those in the vicinity

Doesn't "terrorism" require an ultimate political aim ? Otherwise an over-enthusiastic bank robber who adopted the listed armaments becomes a terrorist through choice of tools, rather then stated goal

I'm a tad wary of being led down a "you know what I mean !" sort of definition which tends to be a way to try and avoid things like ... skin colour, or "ethnicity". As we have already seen, white skin+murder for political ends="nothing to see", whereas non-white skin+murder for political ends="terrorist" (with a double bubble if you can crowbar the word "Islamist" or "Fundamentalist" before)

DGR actually the police in the U.K. are in many respects less militarised and more accountable than in most developed countries.

I'm not giving them a free pass here (I'm a north Londoner who remembers the days of serious Met Police corruption, as well as de Menezes of course), but what I think it is absolutely clear that the perpetrator of this incident had more chance of being taken alive in the U.K. than in virtually any other European state.

If he had committed those stabbings in a public building in France for example (where all police are armed) - he'd most likely have been shot inside the building and not out on the bridge.

He was a terrorist. He killed 2 people. He is now dead - good!

As long as there was no safe alternative, agreed. Beyond that we have no place in this - or any civilised society - for extra judicial justice. For anyone.

Just think the BBC have seriously damaged their credibility in this election, maybe irreparably. Saw a response saying we keep hearing that terrorism should not be allowed to affect our democracy and the BBC have just done that by caving into Boris on the back of a terrorist incident.

Predictable BBC cave in. Glad I'm not paying for it.

I agree Violet

Johnson has shown himself to be a coward by not turning up to the Channel 4 Leader's Debate, instead sending his daddy.

It galls me that Johnson is wittering on about the courage of the public. A man with no back bone who constantly lies.

DGR actually the police in the U.K. are in many respects less militarised and more accountable than in most developed countries.

Oh, I know. And long may it continue. By all means give them the tools they need. But there is a price - and that's eternal oversight. The second we stop looking, is the second we enter a secret police state. A phrase which isn't very easy to acronymise in English, but which might sound better in a foreign tongue

We should be grateful every day we are still policed by consent.

Tory Fibs
@ToryFibs
·
10m
Unbelievable

In power for 9+ years and Boris Johnson has just blamed others for the fact the Terrorist was imprisoned in 2012 and released in 2018. Treating UK voters with contemptuous levels of deception here.

twitter.com/i/status/1200768296339021824

I don't think that the minority of Britons who still oppose extrajudicial police killings are well served by people leaping to conclusions in this case. You look anti-police, and not pro-justice. The police officer involved also has a right to be presumed innocent.

I'm a tad wary of being led down a "you know what I mean !" sort of definition which tends to be a way to try and avoid things like ... skin colour, or "ethnicity".

Now I know you're being deliberately disingenuous (the use of the face is a bit of a giveaway... 🙄)

I will answer though.

The police did not declare it a terrorist incident immediately

They did so after the event

I am presuming his electronic tag & subsequent id which threw up his terrorist past sort of led them to the conclusion in this case

Nowt to do with the man's skin colour or religious affiliation - everything to do with his terrorist past actions 🤷🏻‍♀️

Late PMK

I don't think that the minority of Britons who still oppose extrajudicial police killings are well served by people leaping to conclusions in this case.

I really hope that "minority" is a typo ?

I appreciate you'd be able to lead people into thinking they like the idea of the police taking out random strangers on the basis that a few might be bad'uns. But a serious debate would rebut that.

And I hope asking questions isn't counted as leaping to conclusions ....

The Tory Government had plenty of time in the last 9 years to bring about a change of the law regarding those charged with terrorist offences. What they choose to do instead was decimate the prison and probation services because of 'austerity' cuts. There's no backing away from this. The Tory Government was implicit in this.

No doubt the excuse of wasting the last three years on getting Brexit done will be a pathetic excuse. Yet in that time more cuts to vital services were implemented. It's as simple as that. No ifs, no buts.

The Tory Government had plenty of time in the last 9 years to bring about a change of the law regarding those charged with terrorist offences. What they choose to do instead was decimate the prison and probation services because of 'austerity' cuts. There's no backing away from this. The Tory Government was implicit in this.

It's useful to have a wardrobe full of bogeymen, so you can swap and change when needed. Especially as the IRA rather unsportingly held to their word and stopped their activities.

It's useful to have a wardrobe full of bogeymen, so you can swap and change when needed. Especially as the IRA rather unsportingly held to their word and stopped their activities.

Sorry, DGR, I don't understand this reply. Can you elucidate further?

I really hope that "minority" is a typo ?

No - unfortunately there is plenty of evidence that many people have quite mediaeval attitudes to criminal justice.

What do you think the outcome would be if the U.K. held a referendum on capital punishment?

The police were alerted to his existence by people whom he had told he was planning to blow himself up with a suicide vest which he was showing off to them, and who had seen him killing and injuring people with a knife. I think that in such circumstances the police might just have worked out that perhaps he was killing people with a knife and that he planned to blow himself up with a suicide vest. That was the information they had been given, and that was the information upon which they acted.

There was no way for the police to be sure at the point at which he was shot that he was acting alone and that he was a liar. In 2017 more than one person was involved in the London Bridge/Borough Market attack on the population at large; that time, eight people were killed and forty-eight injured, including unarmed policemen; fairly obviously not having that happening again was a priority.