Re: Police 'terror' swoop on BBC man
 

Note that new style UK driving licenses have a chip that contains a lot of your personal information, including NI number, address, etc.

Re: Police 'terror' swoop on BBC man
 

Superbly put. If we change any single thing in any way at all, the terrorists win. We lose some of our "freedom" and their job is complete. And call me logical but living in rural yorkshire, I don't really consider that I'm in danger of an imminent terrorist attack. If those who lived in London feel threatened... move.

And with the new style licences, will they still require the user to carry the paper bit too? :) the only country in the world to introduce a system which is two steps backwards.

Re: Police 'terror' swoop on BBC man
 

How new?
My 1 year old one looks ok.
Anyway, 5 secs in the micro at low sorts that out.

Re: Police 'terror' swoop on BBC man
 

Apparently there are at least twice as many spooks as there are terrorists. No wonder things like this happen, there are simply not enough terrorists to go around :D Got to jump at every rucksack wielding foreigner you can if you want that promotion :D

Mind you, if you can get shot 11 times in the head for not wearing bulky clothes, and not jumping barriers, but looking a teensy bit foreign whilst using public transport then wearing a rucksack with protruding wires whilst having a complexion that suggests you might come from some place warm doesn't strike me as the embodiment of common sense. If not from a public panic angle then at least from a self preservation perspective.

Re: Police 'terror' swoop on BBC man
 

To be fair to the police, i'd rather there be a 100 cases of mistaken identity or false alarm than 1 bomb going off that could have been prevented...

Re: Police 'terror' swoop on BBC man
 

To which smartarses respond, "Jean Charles de Menezes, Giueseppi Conlon and Harry Stanley would disagree" ;)

We're in an interesting situation here though, where we're arguably under less terrorist threat than we were during the "troubles"- certainly the death toll in the UK is lower- but we're still being asked and expceted to take measures and accept changes that were unthinkable considered then.

Re: Police 'terror' swoop on BBC man
 

And the governments already proven that it can't be trusted with the powers it has now, let alone the ones it's asking or.

Re: Police 'terror' swoop on BBC man
 

He was the guy that threatend armed officers with a table leg in a bag and didnt do what he was told to do.

Re: Police 'terror' swoop on BBC man
 

Nope. The armed officers were only there because someone reported "an irishman with a gun", and the call-out was treated as irish terrorism related. More importantly, he was shot from the left and behind which contradicted the police claims that he had stood in a "boxer's stance" and pointed the leg at them as if it were a gun- the ballistics reports showed that was impossible, and that he was almost certainly shot while turning to face them.

Re: Police 'terror' swoop on BBC man
 

Fair point, but i'm sure all the families of those killed or injured on 7/7 would agree...

At the end of the day, if you see a policeman with a gun pointing at you, drop whatever it is your holding and get on the floor, not run away or do anything which could be considered threatening.

There are hundreds possibly thousands of anti terror operations going on right now in this country that we will never hear about, the parties involved don't expect, or recieve any praise. Yet on the very rare occasion that it goes wrong, they are hung out to dry and persicuted (sp?) by the public and the media, which i think is a shame.

People forget that the person holding the gun will be scared as well, it's not easy to shoot someone. I've been in situations with suspected suicide bombers and i can tell you everytime i would rather shoot first and be wrong, than hesitate and be dead.

Anyways, rant over.