Is May about to call an election?

Maybe despite your useless suggestions and pointless trolling you have no practical ideas there.

Yes I have, I said one above – permit all police officers to carry firearms on and off duty, as in Northern Ireland

20,000 more police officers who can’t lock people up based on them not having committed any crime – they might be great for investigating Facebook crime and arresting people for calling a police horse gay, but they can’t stop a terrorist attack armed only with an 18″ metal stick!

Which Cressida Dick specifically said she didn’t want ninfan.
And gave her reasons (R4 this morning if it helps)

There are no easy answers. Even (or especially) with routinely armed officers you’d be waiting for the van to hit people before you could do anything (might make drivers less likely to hit cyclists if the thought they might get shot though).

How about banning cars, vans etc from the centre of towns where there are large crowds? Stop some of these terrorist actions and improve air quality that is actually a far greater threat.

PS you mentioned NI, where the troubles eased when we started talking to terrorists not when we tried draconian measures against them.

Yes I have, I said one above – permit all police officers to carry firearms on and off duty, as in Northern Ireland

and why is that a good idea? Wouldn’t have stopped Manchester and not sure what it would have done in London. Got the stats on having more armed police like in France or Germany or the US. Is it actually working anywhere or is it just your gun fetish again?

@ninfan, I’m not involved in policing so have no idea. But as others has said, I hope a senior member of the MET has an inkling of an idea.

If you don’t trust the top brass, perhaps the view of an armed police office might sway you? Independant Article here[/url]

I have no idea how much of this is propaganda / people with an axe to grind, but all you can do is assimilate the information and make a judgement.

In other news, the satisfaction ratings of all parties except the greens are now negative.

permit all police officers to carry firearms on and off duty, as in Northern Ireland

Have you met many police? They’d kill more innocent civilians than the terrorists. More guns is never a good idea!

Yes I have, I said one above – permit all police officers to carry firearms on and off duty, as in Northern Ireland

You are Charlton Heston and I claim my magazine of ammunition for my fully-automatic assault rifle 😆

Come on, what do you actually propose more people could have done?

This.

It’s perfectly legal to drive a car. It’s perfectly legal to have a knife. It’s perfectly legal to have radical islamic views as long as you dont’ act on them.

Assuming the “planning” stage is fairly limited and largely verbal the first time these guys step outside the law in a provable way is when they go on the rampage. Locking people up for “seeming like the sort of person who might be a terrorist” is utterly counter-effective.

one of corbyns main appeals is he actually answers the question

He seems no different to any other politician on that score. He has to dodge the tricky questions – that’s why they’re tricky questions. I see no evidence Corbyn is less evasive than the others and I’d be interested in seeing a count of ‘evasive answers’ from each of the parties to directly compare.

Also raises the question If the media is pro-May why is she being asking more difficult questions that she has to be evasive over? Surely the candidate the media are biased towards would be asked the *least* tricky questions and be the least evasive?

In Corbyn’s case there’s 30 years worth of lunacy he has to dodge questions on plus the small matter of how he’s going to pay for all the Unicorns he’s promised and where the parliamentary time is coming from to do it all. Whenever he’s asked about paying for his policies he just mutters “Corporation tax” as though Corporation tax revenue is somehow magically in-elastic.

Did anyone see the comparison of the security legislation Corbyn had voted against (pretty extensive) and the security legislation May had voted against (pretty similar actually)?

So the nazi sympathiser wants the police to have guns… After an innocent bystander was shot. Good work..

Also raises the question If the media is pro-May why is she being asking more difficult questions that she has to be evasive over?

She isn’t, she has no answers to the easy and obvious questions. It’s almost as if she expects to be asked a difficult question and jumps straight in with the evasion before her brain works out it is actually a simple question (except I don’t think she has any answers for any unscripted questions).

Binners – I’m not calling for everyone to be armed, I’m not calling for the right to carry a gun around the streets

I’m calling for the police to be armed, as they already are in part of the UK and pretty much the rest of the world.

Two of the last three attacks have resulted in unarmed police officers, first on the scene, taking on terrorists armed only with a baton. Only for that attack to be subsequently ended by armed police. That’s ridiculous given the threat that we, as a society, currently face.

Also raises the question If the media is pro-May why is she being asking more difficult questions that she has to be evasive over?

Easy answer. She isnt being asked “more difficult questions”.
She is that incapable she cant even manage to answer what should be straightforward questions.
Hence the change in the press coverage over the course of the campaign as the media have got a tad irritated with her.

I’m calling for the police to be armed, as they already are in part of the UK and pretty much the rest of the world.

In contrast to the what the UK police want.

That’s ridiculous given the threat that we, as a society, currently face.

How are you going to pay for all the extra cops required to cover the training time for training all cops to be even basically competent with a firearm?
What about those cops who cant shoot straight and hence would be a liability?

I’m calling for the police to be armed

Yeah, cos more guns has always worked.,,.

What happens when one side gets a new bigger, deadlier toy than the other side?

Hmm?

The other side goes & gets a toy that matches or is bigger….

Just what we need: an arms race on our streets..

You haven’t thought this through have you..

She isnt being asked “more difficult questions”.

She isn’t, she has no answers to the easy and obvious questions.

It seems impossible to me that the candidate getting the hardest questions is being least evasive, while the candidate who is getting the questions that require no evasion is being most evasive, but let’s assume that’s true…

How do you know this? That’s right. From the media.

So the media which is biased against Corbyn is informing you (in your view correctly) that Corbyn is far better than May.

In contrast to the what the UK police want.

Pfft! What do they know? We’ve a bona fide expert giving them the answers here

Heres Amber Rudd not wanting to upset the arms revenue money stream and make sure no one talks about our allies funding extremist dogma

Also raises the question If the media is pro-May why is she being asking more difficult questions that she has to be evasive over?

She isn’t being asked more difficult questions. She just can’t answer them because her and her parties previous actions don’t back up any answer she can give. And the media that is pro-May is media such as Daily Mail which don’t ask May any questions. They just slur Corbyn at eery opportunity

In Corbyn’s case there’s 30 years worth of lunacy he has to dodge questions on plus the small matter of how he’s going to pay for all the Unicorns

Only lunacy if you believe the biased media (which you clearly do) with things taken out of context, don’t include the explanations given etc,.
He has clearly laid out how he is going to pay for it, not sure why people don’t get this. You can disagree with it and use your economics experience to find potential holes but the key thing is if you agree in the direction and intent.
Do you want improved public services and do you want to tax rich people and corporations to pay for the improvements. If you don’t then fine, move on.

ninfan – Member
I’m calling for the police to be armed, as they already are in part of the UK and pretty much the rest of the world.

Can you provide evidence that it’ll stop terrorism?

Assuming the “planning” stage is fairly limited and largely verbal the first time these guys step outside the law in a provable way is when they go on the rampage.

I’m sure that amassing bomb making material and building the device is fairly illegal.

Dunno what can be done about nutters in vehicles though other than as suggested, modify driver behaviour and town planning, so a win win on that front?

Assuming the “planning” stage is fairly limited and largely verbal the first time these guys step outside the law in a provable way is when they go on the rampage.

I’m sure that amassing bomb making material and building the device is fairly illegal.

Dunno what can be done about nutters in vehicles though other than as suggested, modify driver behaviour and town planning, so a win win on that front?

How are you going to pay for all the extra cops required to cover the training time for training all cops to be even basically competent with a firearm?

In NI it’s built into their initial training period, at a total cost of £582.94 per officer (less than the cost of training them to drive a panda car, but we don’t seem to think that’s beyond the polices means, do we?)

PC Ninfan earlier (panda car just out of shot).

so about 120k Police officers
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/police-workforce-england-and-wales-31-march-2015/police-workforce-england-and-wales-31-march-2015
Quick maths £582*120,000 is £69.8 Million plus the guns, plus the ammo, plus the ongoing training, plus the law suits

Double post

Arming police just leads to more guns in general. More guns in circulation leads to more shots fired. It’s an escalation in violence.

ninfan shows his true colours here.

Aye, armed police.
As noted above, it will start an arms race for most violent criminal enterprises, not just bank robberies and “my drug dealing mates” going “Strapped”

mikewsmith – Member

Quick maths £582*120,000 is £69.8 Million plus the guns, plus the ammo, plus the ongoing training, plus the law suitsPlus the innocent people shot in the face. Plus criminals tooling up.

In NI it’s built into their initial training period, at a total cost of £582.94 per officer

Awesome. That will just about cover a few rounds down range and “dont point a gun at someone in jest”. Just to be clear my idea of basic competence is being less of a liability than someone who isnt armed.

(less than the cost of training them to drive a panda car, but we don’t seem to think that’s beyond the polices means, do we?)

I think it costs rather more to train an advanced driver. Which is what the equivalent training level you want if you dont just want the guns in the hands of the muppets or more casualties caused by the cops than by the muppets.

And Cressida says it won’t do much and might be counterproductive in a crisis.

Ninfan – do feel free to listen to people who have some knowledge of the situation – Cressida that is, not me.

Is a hung parliament now the most likely outcome?

molgrips – Member
Is a hung parliament now the most likely outcome?

latest poll (jun 3rd) from Survation has Con 40, lab 39

yougov (jun 2nd) Con 42, lab 38

not sure what the latest attack might do to that and it is after all only polls

YouGov have modelled seats and put Tories on 305 or so.

Who knows how accurate that’ll end up being! I think sleep will be hard to come by on Thursday night.

It seems impossible to me that the candidate getting the hardest questions is being least evasive

You seem to be operating under the illusion that the fact May fails to answer the questions means she is being asked the hardest questions. Why is that?

How do you know this? That’s right. From the media.

I dont know if you have noticed but there have been quite a few interviews/press conferences etc for both of them? Where we can see them directly in action as opposed to having the media interpretation of what they said.
Now I admit it could be possible that the media are doing some rather heavy editing to make May look like she fails to answer the questions but that seems rather low probability. Especially given the fact not even the mail have claimed that.

#FullyCostedIdeas
I had a very interesting conversation about the difference between Competent and Proficient, one is a legal minimum to be able to go out there. At the end of this quick intro these people may face having to use their weapons on day 1.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-07-04/how-british-police-officers-keep-peace-without-carrying-guns
http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2353-i-was-cop-in-country-with-no-guns-6-startling-truths.html

So, we had police, in the right place, at the right time, and in a role and job where there is just little or no chance that he would have been armed. If he had been, this attack would have been over in seconds.

How so? Sure, he might have been able to shoot one attacker, but assuming it was close range a knife is a far quicker weapon to wield, and he was outnumbered 3:1. He had just as much chance of shooting innocent bystanders in the panic, and once they’d overpowered him they’d have his gun and ammo too. Excellent. 🙄

Is a hung parliament now the most likely outcome?

I think that the whole concept of polling, and their previous models used, is now so completely all-over-the-place as to be totally irrelevant.

The bottom line is we won’t know until the fat lads sings. Which means it’ll be interesting to sit and watch the reults come in. There’s bound to be the odd Portillo moment

I’ve stuck a tenner on no overall majority, last week. I got odd of 7/2

Nah May will manage to keep her majority, probably a modest increase?

enjoying that the tories will be having sleepless nights until then tho, some of them look horrendous at the moment Johnson, Davis, Maybot herself