Re: Violence in Spain
 

Each to their own, but I've never found that with Spanish police, and I've seen a few pop in a bar for a coffee or snack. There again I've never even seen a hint that they were considering extracting their pistol from the holder. The closest I came was when a group of Civil Guard asked what I was doing when they found me strolling down a country path in Aragon - they wanted to know what I was doing, and to see my passport. Apparently the locals didn't go for a mid-day stroll - I was a bit of a rarity. .and even when they found out I didn't have the passport on me they weren't stroppy, just needed the name of the hotel I was staying at.

Re: Violence in Spain
 

Those guys with all their arms are there to protect you from the Muslim extremists who want to kill you. That's their sole function, to kill those arseholes from the Middle East with their suicide belts and bombs.

If you want to know the way to Amarillo, don't ask them.

Re: Violence in Spain
 

So you've never been dragged up a back alley and given a good seeing to with their truncheons :rofl:, well fortunately neither have I, though having seen it happen on a few occasions, I was more inclined to turn a blind eye than walk up to them and ask for their ID.:ohmy:

Re: Violence in Spain
 

When I was a young lad growing up in central Scotland, I was a bit of a tearaway and the local cops only had a bicycle shed to beat up tearaways in. I'll always remember that bicycle shed, and the PC's name, but a few years later he was kind enough to provide me with a reference for a really respectable job in London.

On the condition I never returned to his patch. I kept my promise for many years, but then came back to visit family. Purely by chance, I walked past his little retirement cottage where he was weeding his garden with a spade.

I proudly told him of my achievements in life and he came up to the fence with his spade.

'A DS on the Flying Squad? I'm not surprised you bent bastard,' and tried to hit me with his spade.

Re: Violence in Spain
 

Somehow given your description I don't think they would have been community police. Lets not forget not that long ago that a lunatic drove a car bomb into an airport killing people. Oh yeh forgot maybe if they had an old fashioned bobby who had asked them to stop the would have done?

Re: Violence in Spain
 

I agree

Re: Violence in Spain
 

More utter and complete tosh spouted by you yet again. I suspect you'd be more than happy to see the same police use their (not particularly large) weapons if the airport and you were under attack :rofl:

http://news.yahoo.com/anti-cuts-prot...7--sector.html
Spanish polish are far less threatening of course :D

Re: Violence in Spain
 

And I suppose that if they had spotted a couple of robocops patrolling inside they would have thought, "Oh my! there's a couple of seriously hard-looking armed and dangerous policemen in there, let's choose a different airport to drive this car into."

The outcome would have been the same regardless.

Re: Violence in Spain
 

All interesting I must say. I take all the views on board (even the more 'extreme', scary) but as I said these are mad times and where there used to be time to 'rally the troops' when a serious incident occurred, the dynamics of the World we now live in dictate that there has to be constant diligence and readiness on the part of the Police today, no matter where. That includes batons, tasers, CS spray and in some cases firearms routinely carried. Yep, America has arrived.

Finally, how many people would be happy with receiving the finest firearm training, being issued with a weapon and the last thing you heard was 'If you make a mistake, you're on your own!'.(The 'hard' word, not given to gun toting Crims, guaranteed) There are more firearms in Cities like Liverpool and London than used to be in the whole of the UK, fact.

And yes, I have done that, all of it....... including the riots,but given the choice I would NEVER have wanted to and I really mean that.SOMEONE had to do it, or the loonies really did have the asylum to themselves and where would the 'ordinary man' be then?

Re: Violence in Spain
 

I used to live round the corner from the Granada central police depot, they were regulars in the bar under the flat complex. Used to call in at the end of shift or something, so the facilities there can't be too good.

Stevie, isnt it about time you got an NIE ??

Re: Violence in Spain
 

An alternative point of view might be that the world is not in fact a more dangerous place, we are just being constantly told that it is.
The reason? Control.
Freedom of speech is being erased, the right to protest being removed - all under the banner of "The War on Terror!".
Do we actually know that terrorism is on the increase?

I read an article not long ago that went along these lines:

No more than ten years ago if it had been proposed that RFID or tracking chips were to be forced onto every citizen in the civilized world then there would have been such an outcry, riots and protesting over civil liberties, the Big Brother state and freedom of movement, that the idea could never have been implemented.
Nowadays millions of people are queuing up to voluntarily be tracked 24hrs a day, and they are even prepared to pay for the pleasure! Witness the recent launch of the Iphone5.

Smart phones must be the governments wet-dream: the ability to tell exactly where on the planet any individual phone is located.
Big-business can tell exactly what we purchase, and what we search for on the Internet. Supermarkets have been doing that for years. If they had said that they wanted to record the name and address of all their customers and log every product they buy and hold this information in a huge database so that they can target their marketing and advertising at you then most people would have been horrified at the thought. However, offer those same people a penny off their shopping bill for every thousand pounds they spend and everyone thinks it's a great idea. Witness the introduction of loyalty cards.

It's all about control.
Tell everyone that they're in danger and they will want extra protection. And if some government minister can make a shed load of money out of it then so much the better.

Re: Violence in Spain
 

:thumbsup: Exactly

The world is definitely no more dangerous then it used to be - both in terms of crime and external threats. It is a way of controlling people and pretending that the powers that be are doing a great job protecting their citizens, when in reality, there is very little to protect them from

Re: Violence in Spain
 

It's not whether terrorism is on the increase, but the capacity and intent of the perpetrators to inflict larger attacks. We may well have had more attacks on London in the days of the Irish Republicans, but their attacks generally were against buildings, targeted politicians or even guardsmen horses. The terrorists of today seek bigger and more populous targets - hence the Madrid and London public transport bombings.

Re: Violence in Spain
 

Anyone seen the Police in action this week at the Madrid demos:huh:

Re: Violence in Spain
 

Warranted or not, none of it will help the Spanish economy.