Except, in the case of the vast majority of British suicide-bombers, they were born here…

…so where do we ‘deport’ them to?

Hell.

You have contradicted yourself there. The police didn’t know he had gone to Syria. Why? Is this not a case for eyes and ears on the ground?

How would they know if he’d gone to Syria? How would more police in the UK be able to deduce that? Someone has to spot him crossing into/out of Syria and notify the UK. This can only be done by foreign police in Syria’s neighbouring nations. It is well beyond the remit of local police. And since you bring this up, remember the Paris attacker that had been arrested and prosecuted for firing an AK-47 at police many years earlier, who’d also been arrested returning from Syria and still went on to commit the attack. It’s not more police that are required, it’s more law, more prosecutions and more life sentences that are required.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-shooting-bomber-idUSKBN0TS0LF20151209

BNFL wasn’t ‘destroyed’ by a Labour Government. There was a phased selling of its assets to private concerns that amounted to a privatisation and decentralisation – all good tory stuff. The plan to do this began with the Government of John Major. If you recall the Blair Government was not a Labour Government as Corbyn would understand it. It was a ‘New Labour’ government, and as such was 50% neo-liberalism and 50% bull.

The Tories left in 1997, Labour did this in 2006, so no shifting blame, own it. The term ‘New labour’ was only invented because ‘Old Labour’ was toxic at the time, but they went and over spent just like Old Labour, so then New Labour became toxic and re-branding happened once again. Same crap, different tin. Think of the Aldi advert. I hate this Labour, and I hate this Labour.

This was complicated by some serious fraud and falsification of quality data that had begun in 1996 and which was discovered in 1999. It clearly could not continue in the shape it was (my father worked for them, in nuclear safety, and will attest to that). Putting it on the international market may not have been the way forward. But the old senior management guard at BNL, still entrenched after the Windscale enquiry and increasingly prone to ‘say anything’ had to go, and all parties agreed on that. I don’t recall police baton charges against them, though.

What it was actually about was decommissioning liabilities, which would have requires extensive government funds anyway. So they broke up a company that owned Westinghouse and ABB and turned it into Nexus, NNL and Sellafield Ltd, none of which were as capable of the original group.

At the same tjme there was a decomissioning process as the older stations were run down, and the policy at the time from both parties was not to immediately replace them.

Was it? Labour were in charge, Labour made the call. Replacing Calder Hall would have kept the skill set maintained but they waiting 10 years, so they could ask the Chinese to build a French reactor instead.

The new statutory body called BNFL that still had administrative oversight of the whole complicated mess and which had steadied the ship was actually finally closed down by the coalition Goverrnment in 2010.

No, it formally broke up in 2005, BNFL only remained until 2010 as a legal entity for the purpose of pensions.

On 1 April 2005, BNFL formed a new holding company, and started a rigorous restructuring process which would transfer or sell most of its entire domain, divisions. In 2005, it transferred all of its nuclear sites to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. It then sold its Westinghouse Electric Company subsidiary in February 2006. Later, BNFL sold the separate companies that made up its major subsidiary, British Nuclear Group, leaving a decommissioning and reprocessing organisation which became Sellafield Ltd. By May 2009, BNFL had completed the sales of all its assets and had no remaining operational activities or businesses.

BNFL continued to exist only as a legal entity to meet all pension liabilities and any obligations arising from disposal programmes. However, on 14 October 2010, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, announced that BNFL would be abolished along with a number of other government organisations.[1]

US Air Force Reverses Retirement Plans for A-10, U-2 Fleet

The police numbers thing is a bit of a red herring IMHO, but there is, of course some truth in it. Let’s step back a bit and look at 2005 and 2008 when Labour were in government, and we had, it must be said, more police on the streets. And yet, London was targeted in 05 and Glasgow airport in 08. The numbers of police may not then be entirely relevant. This is ultimately, a failure of intelligence. A failure to link this mans return just a few weeks earlier to a likely attack. No amount of police in the ground in Manchester would have stopped that. I would surmise that he was already being watched, but that nobody expected anything to happen so fast. An operation controlled entirely from overseas might provide the cover necessary to do this.

Ultimately we expect that Human nature suggests that things will always play out in similar ways, and very often it does. Perhaps, this time, it didn’t, and no amount of feet on the ground would have changed that. We will never know of course.

Lastly, I would note that the intelligence community has seen strengthened numbers; perhaps at the detriment of the police.

Bruce

Completely agree Bruce. Except I don’t think the police knew he went to Syria, which is due to the Schengen zone and perhaps other nations who didn’t notice him crossing borders and report it back to us.

But the problem is very much that the current system relies on waiting until someone actually acquires explosives and then intervening between then and the actual act itself, which is a very narrow window, even when they do have intelligence about the person, as they did in this case. That needs to change. Flying Nazi flags and verbalising support for the Nazis would not have been allowed during WWII, so why do we allow the same now?

You must be living on the set of Heartbeat.;) Counter-terrorism is equivalent to counter-organised crime. People do not approach unarmed, uniformed police in broad daylight to report it. Why would they, when they can pick up a phone or drop an e-mail in private without putting a target on their back?

And again, they have 1.6 million police in China and 0.76 million police in Russian and they still suffered many terrorist attacks. One even on a police station. Sorry but this Labour electioneering myth has been utterly busted.

Intelligence in community policing does not equal intelligence in counter-terror and counter-organised crime policing. What next? A claim that more local bobbies could have prevented LIBOR fixing? Maybe they could even have stopped Madoff in his tracks?

And for the final time. The authorities were aware of Abedi. He was flagged no less than five times. So what’s your argument here? More cops might have led to him being flagged 6 or 7 times?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/24/security-services-missed-five-opportunities-stop-manchester/

UK attacks. As saddened and disgusted as I am with it all, I do often wonder at how often we use the term terrorist, we are at war with ISIS and actively engaged in rightfully destroying them and as such is it not simply a case of ISIS bringing the war to us? I often think, did the Germans view the French Resistance as Terrorists where as the French simply viewed it as the French people continuing the war and fighting for this survival. I do think sadly these attacks will increase as they take further losses in territories and manpower simply because they hope to break the will and support for continuing action.. Something I believe they have seriously misjudged.

You make a fair point. The classification of ‘enemy combatants’ was working just fine until the bleeding heart liberals said it was unfair to detain people just because they supported our enemy. If someone supports ISIS that should be an offence of treason in itself and enough to arrest and detain someone for the duration of the war against ISIS. Fly an ISIS flag and you’re on a plane to Gitmo, post a tweet supporting ISIS, you’re on a plane to Gitmo, post a tweet laughing about an ISIS attack in the UK, you’re on a plane to Gitmo.

Well you should try thinking. Anti-terror police were not cut, only uniformed bobbies were and the like were cut. They do not have any impact on terrorism. A police spokesperson will say anything to protect numbers but facts are fact. Having more uniformed, unarmed police does not stop terrorism, how could it?

Oh my God, you think every terrorist conspirator hangs an ISIS flag out of their window? These people are trained to keep a low profile, hence how he managed to get all the way across Europe to Syria, without Interpol or any other national law enforcement agency noticing. But some damn flat foot walking an estate is going to be able to look at a house and think “hmmmm… this looks like a terrorist house,” meanwhile a cop in a hi-vis jacket wouldn’t be spotted at all.

And besides that, he was already known to intelligence services, so a few extra cops walking the beat wouldn’t have made any difference.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/home-secretary-amber-rudd-admits-10487238

Exactly how do you determine that the Westminster attack was unsuccessful? He kill 6 people, including a cop and injured 50. And please review this response before you continue to rattle on about cop numbers.

http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?142213-GE2017-take-2&p=2392816#post2392816

The affect? A near bunkrupt nation with a 90% debt that still has a 3% deficit. We’re paying tens of billions extra servicing debt each year instead of spending it on public services because Labour decided to run a deficit from 2001-2008 and borrow during a boom, instead of continuing with the surplus the Conservatives left them, which would have left us better placed to deal with the 2008 crash. People killed themselves after 2008 because of Labour’s policies.