Amazulu

Okay, so we've established that:

You have no answer as to why beat police are always armed in virtually every nation apart from the UK and a few others

Keith Palmer may still be alive today if he'd had a suit of armour but not a sidearm

You're okay with the fact that civilians died unnecessarily at LB because bobbies were not armed and couldn't defend them - in order to fit in with some outdated notion that patrol officers shouldn't be armed

Glad we've cleared all this up

As for cops not wanting to be armed, your response is pathetic. In the real world that I live in (obviously as a civil servant, you don't live in the real world), if my boss tells me to do something required as part of my employment, I have 2 choices:
a. I can do what I've been told to do, or
b. Refuse to do what I'm told to do but accept the fact that my services would therefore no longer be required by my employer and leave

Simple as

scrubbedexpat098

Why do we seem fixated on winning the hearts and minds of heartless, mindless killers? As an absolute minimum, the hate preachers need to be locked away from the earshot of anyone susceptible to their poison.

If they are truly using young disaffected Muslims to carry out their urges to destroy the West, then surely we can all agree they need to be dealt with swiftly and without a thought to their civil liberties.

GarryP

It's not the hearts and minds of the killers that matters; it's the populous as a whole. It's said that at present the UK have 3000 'persons of interest' on their books. That itself is too many, meaning finding those that are actually a threat, as opposed to those that are just pissed off, is like finding a needle in a haystack.

Now imagine that you did something really dumb, something that trump would do, and say, tag every single muslim since any of them could become a terrorist. Now you've placed all of them in the same basket as the actual terrorists, and a notable number will become radicalised *because of your actions*. 3000 becomes 10,000. The number of attacks rises 3x, the lashing out gets worse, more extreme actions taken against muslims - and pretty soon you have all out war (2.6m muslims in the UK).

They aren't mindless, this is the game they are trying to play, and why they take the most extreme act they can; to try to provoke.

That has never, in the course of human history, worked. You can't kill an idea by trying to lock it up, particularly a religious idea.

Nope, quite the reverse. You need to demonstrate the maximum distance between you and them - so you can win the high ground, and those all important hearts and minds.

ozzieeagle

I think it's too late Gary.

Two recent attacks, one on young girls and the other on what is possibly the most tolerant portion of London within the most tolerant part of the Country.

We are very close to the point of no return.

scrubbedexpat098

So you don't even want the hate preachers locked up? So whaty DO you want to do?

The more moderate Muslims are staying clear of openly condemning these murderers BECAUSE we're doing bugger all about it. Locke them up in normal prisons, and they turn them into ISIS recruiting centres for god's sake.

Doing nothing but putting daisies down their gun barrels is achieving nothing. It's easy to remain unprovoked if you're not in the firing line, but many people are, and many many people can empathise with them. All we are saying is give Glocks a chance

Oh and by the way, in no way have I said every Muslim is suspect or should be tagged, I believe that'll be you using one of those strawmen you so love.

old.sparkles

I was going to write a reply to this - I did write a reply just deleted it. I deleted it because my view does not match yours and posting it will make no difference - we have differing views. My view is not less valid than yours but seems at times to be in a minority in this forum so I, like many, choose not to post more often than not.

My view also is not shared by many in my social media - posts are also filled with hate for the most part. So again I do not post. So it would be easy to see how young, disillusioned people may be led astray by someone purporting to listen to their views, share their views, and give them validity.

Feel free to bash away!

scrubbedexpat098

How is calling for the hate preachers, the recruiters for ISIS and other extremist factions remotely 'Muslim bashing' ? I'm calling for the gutless bastards convincing someone else to kill themselves for their beliefs to be locked up, that is in no way a radical hate filled attempt at a solution. In fact it could save lives on both sides. My posts are not remotely filled with hate, and I actually resent the accusation.

Doing nothing WILL result in far right vigilante groups taking to the streets, and then it really will get ugly, if we're to appease anyone it has to be the people on the receiving end of the hate, and that aint the hate preachers.

Amazulu

I utterly and categorically disagree with your viewpoint on this in respect to 21st century radical islam. I can see how young people can be influenced and led into crime, drugs, sex, even religion but when it comes to terrorism and murder, all of us, young and old, (except maybe those with a mental illness, which admittedly could be the case with some of the current crop of assholes) know the difference between this and what is right. Your viewpoint is a cop out and is an attempt to somehow justify what is going on without wanting to get to the root cause - which is unpalatable to many as it goes against what they think the world is

OzTennis

You haven't cleared anything up; you continually conjecture on what MIGHT have happened if the officers were armed AND had been there at the time - you don't think they'd drive on to somewhere else if they saw armed police; there's plenty of places with big groups of civilians and no police?

Britain does not have armed officers, why do I have to explain to you (in Perth) why they don't? Britain has chosen not to have them armed; whether they should be armed or not is for future debate here.

You are allegedly doing an MBA and you are telling me it is good work practice not to consult with your employees on major matters? No, you believe in management dictatorship despite being a claimed libertarian.

It emerges today that one of the 3 was well known to MI5, appeared on a Ch4 documentary on jihadis, got a job working under the House of Commons etc - better surveillance and more resources for that I reckon.

Amazulu

And Glocks and MP5s

I've completed my MBA BTW. I believe that work should be a 2-way street but ultimately, if management make a decision, and after consultation and feedback and any alterations, it's up to the employees to implement that decision. Arm all cops now. Any that don't want to be armed can be replaced by ones that do

Lock and load

OzTennis

But you are acting as judge and jury from another country and bypassing the consultation stage!! They aren't armed now, you're saying bear arms like they do in some other countries, like it or lump it!

Amazulu

This is what I believe - in bullet-points so that even you can understand - nothing more, nothing less. Anything else you read into it is in your head only:

I'm saying arm all police now

If Keith Palmer had a sidearm he would probably be alive today

If the cop at LB taking on those muslim assholes with a truncheon had a Glock as well, more innocents would be alive today

All police are armed in virtually all countries apart from the UK and a few others. They are armed for a reason - to kill bad guys and to protect the public

Unarmed police cannot protect innocent people from terrorists hell-bent on causing death and destruction. Only armed police can

The UK government is failing its citizens by not arming all police

I'm sick and tired of seeing innocent people and decent police officers dying in order to comply with some outdated, jumpers for goalposts, pwoper Bwitish notion that armed police are in someway undemocratic, unnecessary and counterproductive

Business as usual is no longer an option - it's time for assholes to die before they kill innocents

GarryP

It's not a strawman when you explicitly state that it's an example of a daft move - and then explain why it's a bad idea. It was never ascribed to you.

The point as to what you can do, and the rationale, was described a number of pages back, at the beginning.

Obviously arming the police is a stupid move. If the terrorists can get close enough to injure them without either having guns, all you are doing is making the police more of a target and gifting the terrorists weapons. And it's not even the point - if they have attacked then it's too late anyway. There are multiple ways in which they can have the scale of effect they want, without guns having the faintest chance of making any difference.

You have to break the idea if you want to break the back of the terrorism. Ridicule of the hate preachers by other muslims is much more effective. As is acting to divert teenagers along other paths before they reach 20-25.

Hell, one idea that was described before was to set up a construction project in Italy somewhere, and hire specifically the targeted terrorist types you'd identified to provide manpower for it. Easy to monitor them, they are a long way from home, and you can find a reason to jail them in a foreign country. Sneaky does it.

old.sparkles

My comment about 'bash away' was meant for you to bash my opinion - nothing to do with Muslims who were not mentioned in my post at all

scrubbedexpat098

I assumed you meant Muslim bashing, which was why I arked up, apologies. Why would I bash your opinion?