People are safe. Even with this terrorist incident, Britain is one of the safest places in the world to walk the streets. But terrorism is designed to make people feel unsafe (even though they are, by and large, very safe); hence must be counteracted by an equal bit of panto to make people feel safe again. Enter big, burly armed men in uniform. Being vigilant means: "Let's all engage in collective behaviour that makes us feel safe".
IIRC we're at historically low levels of deaths from terrorist attacks in western Europe despite the number of attack increasing so we must be doing something right, that's not intended as a glib statement about terror attacks and and the lives lost BTW it's just i feel it's important to maintain perceptive.
Very doubtful. If'n someone wanted to go and blow themselves up tomorrow having armed troops and or police about won't stop them
Exactly which takes us back to my original question "How does armed troops on the streets reassure us plebs that they are a defence against a suicide bomber?"
Answering for me, it doesn't, but I don't need reassuring, I've never felt unsafe, still don't. However there will always be a percentage of the population who do need reassurance, the fact that they might not understand having troops about isn't very effective does not matter to them, they'll feel safer. Something must be done, or at least something must be seen to be done. Long story short, if someone wants to go all suicide bomber there's nothing you can do about it.
The SNP government up her in Scotland has decided that we too need to see more armed police on the streets, but I suspect this has little to do with reassuring the public and more to do with the SNP wanting us to think they are a big player on the world stage.
In fairness, they do make it harder, which is probably enough to disrupt any immediate plans. But in general, I agree. That said, I live in the city centre proper (albeit the other side to the arena) and I haven't noticed any police presence. Although I did see a guy with an unmarked pickup fiddling with my local telephone exchange...
Because it makes people feel safe. People are irrational like that. On the other hand, if the SNP decided that you didn't, it would be accused of being neglectful. Can't win, can you?
I'm really doing a bad job of explaining what i mean aren't i. I didn't mean having more armed troops and or police on the streets before this event, i mean that the only reason the government choose to supplement the police at this time is because (afaik) the police said it would be helpful, they expressed concerns that they couldn't provide sufficient cover, that freeing up police from having to protect so many targets would mean more could work on this specific case. In other words the only reason we're seeing troops on the streets is because the police needed more manpower, manpower that they were possibly lacking, manpower that maybe could have been there in the first place so they could surveil more targets of interest and possibly have prevented this attack before it happened.
With President Obama in town and the Edinburgh Marathon this weekend there was a chance there would already have been an increased armed police presence. I do agree, however, that politicians will always try to gain capital from current events. Does it make me feel safer, well in honesty I didn't feel unsafe in the first instance.
What's funny is a similar number of soldiers have been deployed as armed police have been cut. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/36450...ed-forces-to-tackle-manchester-terror-crisis/ 984 soldiers as 1337 armed police cut.
Yes you are I would suppose that all depends on where the cuts were made, you're average bobby, armed or not, would not have any or little input in keeping tabs on the baddies. With 3000 on the 'watch list' I'd think that'd need some serious man power, and specifically trained man power at that.
Who? But a side observation - I stream Sky News while I'm here at work and I've noticed that every few minutes they refer to or introduce it as "coverage on the Manchester terrorist attack". We all know media propagation is one of ISIS main goals, and the power word in that sentence will always be "terrorist", so why don't we dilute their aim of spreading fear and paranoia and start referring to it as coverage of "Manchester's recovery" or "GMP's operations". Remove them as the focus entirely and the desired effect of the crime is also diminished.
Damned if they do, damned if they don't. By talking about terrorism non stop they are playing into the hands of the terrorists, but if they didn't they would end up like the BBC, under non stop attack from the tabloids and we all know that getting on the wrong side of a tabloid in the UK is pretty much suicide.
So the US invaded the country and an Anglo Dutch company got an oil licence, Um, that not exactly the US grabbing their oil is it?
