Off Topic The Politics Thread

I think there's quite a bit of ignorance on here concerning how the security services work, especially about how surveillance is carried out.
How many of the 20,000 police cut are likely to have been highly trained armed officers of the type needed to add more security on the streets in the event of a heightened terrorist threat?
Strolls...........normal bobbies on the beat do not carry out any surveillance on these people, Indeed they wouldn't even know such operations were happening on their patch in many instances. (I've already agreed that cutting police numbers was a mistake however).
We have troops on the streets because there aren't enough highly trained armed police officers and this has been a problem from long before May was on the scene. The army took over guarding important buildings etc, thus releasing these armed cops to be more prevalent and there to try to protect the likes of you guys. Ask most normal people in the street and they are reassured and GRATEFUL for the increased security presence.
Perhaps a little less blaming of our Government and a bit more of the murderous scum killing our people would make a refreshing change. Corbyn & Co always blame their own Country and there's plenty of that on here too.

I'm pretty sick of it and as it seems I'm very much in the minority on here, I'll stop banging my head against this particular brick wall for a while before I say something I shouldn't and that I'll regret,

 

Well of course you are.

 

May, as Home Secretary, cut 1,337 trained firearms police. Last week 984 soldiers were put on the streets to help keep the public safe.

 

I guess they're damned if they do or don't.

Plus it's not going to lose votes to publicly show a response.

 

Panic in Conservative Central Office. At the start of the election campaign their best case scenario was a 200 seat majority, with worst case an 80 seat majority. Now the polls have narrowed and are holding despite Corbyn's evident weaknesses on security (fact is most people agree with him that our Middle Eastern interventions raise the risk of terrorism here, even if they aren't going to vote for him). May's personal popularity has dropped by more than 50% and her personal lead over Corbyn also halved. New best case scenario is an 80 seat majority - worst case a hung parliament. Which is what they will start scaremongering about sharpish.

Dissatisfaction with May amongst the Tory backbenchers growing rapidly. She called the election, made it all about herself and her amazing strength and stability, wrote the manifesto with her little gang then changed it a few hours later, decided the entire strategy herself. She will clearly take the blame from her own side if they don't romp home.

You are right Col I have no expertise, and very little interest, in the details of intelligence work. I know surveillance is incredibly demanding in terms of heads, think I read that you need 30 officers to track one suspect. This is why it's important to know whether they weren't tracking the Manchester bastard because they didn't think it was necessary or that they couldn't physically do it through lack of resource. No one (at least not me) is claiming that the police and intelligence services are not doing a fantastic job in stopping nearly all planned attacks. The debate is whether government policy has made their job harder. On the other hand it is obviously the government's job to make the tough decisions on how to prioritise spending our money, and we get to vote on whether they have done a good job or not.

The current offers on security for us to vote on are:

Tories: more intelligence and security officers, a Commission on Countering Extremism to advise the government on laws etc. No further detail and not included on manifesto, announced yesterday.
Labour: more intelligence and security officers, more prison and border control officers, 10,000 more police officers.

Of course election pledges aren't worth the paper they are written on, or the pixels they take up, but one of these looks a bit stronger than the other to me.

 

No evidence that police cuts made any difference. Highly unlikely any intelligence failure will come down to her unless systemic. Corbyn blames Labour's aggressive and deceitful policy under Blair.

 

I would hazard a guess that the cuts certainly didn't make things easier for our forces

 

Not sure what use armed police are when a bomb blows up.

 

Yeah, but what Corbyn said is all bollocks isn't it? Michael Fallon said so.

 

Yep, but in my view the bit about Blair is true, which is why he and Cherie are so popular

 

Wait a minute. So he was right about Blair's military interventions, but wrong about others - Cameron's in Libya for instance?

 

On the basis that ISIS was created out of the chaos after the Iraq invasion, which was unnecessary and based on a false premise.

 

Your turn stroller...

 

Just admit it Goldie. Corbyn was right, full stop.

 

C'mom Goldie, you can answer that.

 

The Iraq invasion was a disaster. Libya was intended to avoid genocide but crested a vacuum. But the chaos that's been caused by the failure of The Arab Sprng creating a huge number of warring groups across the Middle East is now the major driving force for violence and terrorism, and the UK were hardly involved in that.

Jihadists will find any excuse, and after Manchester, i think we need closer at the asylum seekers we take in. Some are more dangerous than the vile regimes they are escaping.

 

Brace yourselves........ just heard the last bit of Amber Rudd being interviewed by Humphreys, and she was very good. Didn't hear any stupid campaigning, she was calm and measured, made Humphreys behave in a similar manner for once, they were having a proper conversation, not the usual aggression v soundbite/slogan. And she agreed with Nick Clegg that we have to include continued membership of various European security organisations in the Brexit negotiations in the critical interests of national safety.

Through grittted teeth, well done.

 

How is May meant to throw the election when she puts this much better substitute in? Poor from May.

 

Col, everyone on here thinks the people doing the attacks, planning the attacks, recruiting the saps who carry out the attacks and just generally promoting the hate and spread of misinformation are at fault and fully responsible.

No-one is happy that terrorists are killing people. Blaming the killers via this forum won't bring anyone back and the people doing this aren't Rangers fans - so we can't communicate with them here. We can't rewind what has happened. What we can do is ask questions about how things evolved so it came to this. We might be able to change the future so we don't repeat the past.

The other thread was asking the question "Terrorism, Why?". There were thoughts and suggestions about how an innocent baby pops out of the womb with all the potential to do anything in the world and yet they turn out to feel being a suicide bomber and kill people is the thing they want to do with their life. If it was just one simple thing, then it might be simple to fix - but it doesn't look like it.

So we're getting ideas coming up in the discussion and some of them involve us looking at the actions of this government, previous governments and the consequences of those actions. Not all of them are pleasant to hear if you support one political party or another - but they need to be expressed and we need to think about what's being said.

The fact we're a couple of weeks away from electing the next government makes it all the more important, and seems to have heightened peoples suspicions about the motives behind the ideas popping up in the discussion.

Corbyn wasn't "blaming his own Country", in my opinion. Nor are the people who agree with him. Some of them are likely to be Conservative voters. They're highlighting a course of action that the politicians in power took at that time on behalf of us all - Blair, Cameron, May (as Home Sec). If it turns out to have been a bad idea, isn't it a good idea to discuss it and not do it again?

Reducing it to "My party/My Country - right or wrong" is how all this sort of stuff gets started. We should all listen more and shout at each other less.

 

Just to inject some FACTS as opposed to screaming indignation; these figures are disputed and distorted; most of those armed officers were nowhere near the level required for the anti-terrorist units of the police force, many of whom train with the SAS. The changing landscape of law enforcement has meant that more resources have had to be put into cyber crime and specialist anti-terrorist units.
In the force overall, both officer and overall workforce numbers are now back roughly at the levels they were between 2001 and 2003.
It is far too simplistic and opportunistic to link all the problems involving anti-terrorist policing and intelligence work with police numbers being reduced.
I agree that I'd like more bobbies back on the beat and in an ideal world I'd like to see many, many more of them. This doesn't mean that less bobbies on the beat results in more highly trained officers doing their jobs. The two things are largely different issues.

Now, undoubtedly I'd like much, much more money for the intelligence services so that they can monitor or take out every one of the reported 6,000 people involved in terrorist activities in our Country. This is far more important imo than sending billions of pounds to Countries with their own space programmes etc. Cut the overseas budget to those that REALLY need it and billions will be freed up.

The Tories have had an awful election campaign and I said right from day one that they were taking a huge risk calling the election. They could well lose it and if Labour had mostly people like Burnham in their ranks, I'd quite possibly be voting for them.
But no one can vote for Corbyn, McDonnell and Abbott and think that they'll have the security of our Country at heart.