coastieexpat

True , but when you are on Satellite and only get 15 gigs a month you have to order the DVD's. And the PO box is 4 miles away, ( 2 of them a bad dirt road ), so it's a bit of an effort and hardly, " on demand ".

Still, my choice though

kimilseung

Congress want to manage UK police

"Police should carry firearms routinely because of the targeting of officers by terrorists, a leading US Congressman has said.
Mike Rogers, who chairs the House of Representatives’ Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and is seen as a potential candidate for president"

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...internalSearch

BubbleChog

This might be a WTF in GA rather than the US as a whole.

Took a trip to Homebase yesterday for the bits to redecorate my dining room and some lady in the car park told me off because the babychog didn't have a coat on. It was 75F with a clear blue sky!
People here seem to have a really skewed perspective of whats actually cold

SultanOfSwing

My daughter won't let me put her coat on in the mornings, on the way into daycare. Often it's in the high 30s/low 40s when we're going in. I shudder to think what that lady would have said to me those mornings ...

BubbleChog

I've had to hide babychogs wintercoat as everytime she sees it she puts it on then kicks up a stink if we take it off. I'm assuming it's because of the novelty factor.

Surely that far up north you have the opposite issue - freaks wandering round in shorts with 25 inches of snow on the ground.

SultanOfSwing

25" of snow on the ground would be the freak occurrence

But yes, I have often shoveled snow in a t-shirt (not shorts, though) because I got to warm with my coat on. It's normal to see people out and about in shorts down into the 30s in winter. I've done it myself if I had to run out to the shops for a few quick messages and can't be arsed changing into my jeans.

(I wear shorts in the house when the heat is running, I don't go to the shops in just my underwear )

Bnet36

How about this contradiction.... students around campus with tiny shorts on but also have a thick hoodie or coat on, walking briskly to class. I almost took a picture yesterday.

It's not really coat weather yet... long sleeve t-shirt maybe

Cardienscarf

That actually makes me feel rather anxious and angry. Anxious because I don't trust the government over here (UK) not to be easily led, and angry that some US Congressman 1) thinks he knows what's right for the UK and 2) thinks guns are the answer.

Sally Redux

Terrorism is just going to be a cover for anything they want to do.

We've all sleepwalked into this one.

Pulaski

Led by the liberal "lets all be happy, we can leave the immigrants to remain unintegrated in their own community" thinking that has been the dominant political thinking of both the main political parties in the UK, and pretty much all western democracies. We have, indeed, allowed these cancers to develop right under our noses.

SultanOfSwing

The police in Northern Ireland are armed. There are armed divisions in England such as SCO19. When we were coming back through Manchester there were two policemen in the airport armed with carbine rifles. It's always been there as often there is a level of violent crime that warrants an armed response.

It's not really the job of the police to deal with terrorists though. That should really fall to the army, in the same way the army had a large presence in NI until the 1990s.

Hotscot

Yes but do you need to determine whether a guy with a gun is a terrorist or not before you decide which dept handles him?

(That does actually sound a very jobsworth British thing...)

SultanOfSwing

Well, no, I was talking about overt terrorist threats, sorry.

I don't actually have a problem with arming the 'bobby on the beat'. As I said, I grew up around armed police, it really isn't a big deal. If a police officer is attempting to apprehend a criminal, who then produces a gun, wouldn't it be better for said officer's safety if he had his own, rather than producing his asp and handcuffs and radioing in a call for armed response?

Sally Redux

I don't want to be living in The Troubles, sorry.

SultanOfSwing

OK, that was a bad example but consider SCO19, the Met's armed response unit - those are armed British policemen, albeit specially trained ones. Letting a beat cop carry a sidearm is just a more direct version of that. I really don't think there is a danger of trigger-happy policemen in the UK but if it acts as any kind of a deterrent for an armed criminal getting his weapon out in public, it isn't a bad thing.

It should only be done if the level of violent crime in a given police district warrants it though, independent of buzz words like terrorism or immigrants. I'm with you on that part.

Plenty of other European police forces are armed. German police are required to carry while off duty. They seem to handle it OK, though. I think it does a disservice to the British police to suggest that they couldn't.