Heartland

I was pretty shocked that they got the wrong person too, they seemed pretty convinced that that guy was involved with the bombs. I still don't understand why he ran away though if he was innocent

Brideoffrankenstein wrote:I was pretty shocked that they got the wrong person too, they seemed pretty convinced that that guy was involved with the bombs. I still don't understand why he ran away though if he was innocent

i can think of plenty of other reasons why someone might run from the police.presumably ,as they were plainclothes,they weren't waving guns around until he did a runner.
he could have been carrying drugs- not necessarily a dealer or a courier - would you want to be caught with even a tiny bit of hash if you were a respected employee?if a conviction meant losing your job and returning to brazil?
it could be something as silly as him having just shoplifted a mars bar...who knows?he obviously didn't think they were going to shoot him.

boudicca wrote:

Rosalie wrote:Well, I'm used to that.

I just think that giving it such importance as to compare it to 9/11 is counterproductive.

I would say the importance given to 9/11 in itself is...

Yes. It looked great on the telly. Now can we please move on and get a proper body-count from bloody Iraq?

Should we imply that you find 9/11 insignificant?

I tried to read through the last three pages of slow-fire exchange but needed to get to my point before I forgot it. What was it now? Oh yes. Strangely, I've found the events of last Thursday and Friday far more worrying than those of two weeks earlier. That day was astonishingly shocking, yet somehow there seemed to be a sense of "well, they've done it now, no need to worry anymore". Perhaps that was a view from the provinces, John and other London-based Heartlanders can put me straight if that wasn't the case. But then for it to (almost) happen again two weeks later. Well, that's pretty damn fncking scary. Worrying enough that our security forces missed them first time round, but for them to get under the presumably close-inspection-radar a second time seemed to demonstrate that they haven't a damn clue who they're supposed to be tracking. And then Friday's news. I couldn't believe that someone had been so publicly shot dead at point blank range in this country. In the absence of any real facts, I reassured myself that there must have been a very strong suspicion of his being a suicide bomber for this to happen. So I made a point of watching the news that night. They said an Asian man had come out of a house which was under surveillance following the previous day's events wearing a winter coat. No rucksack. Presumably they thought he had some kind of explosives round his waist, hence the coat. He was acting a bit suspicious near a tube station and legged it when challenged. So they ran him down and shot him. All I can say is I hope there's far more evidence than that. I hope I'm out of date and they've proven some very direct link with his being about to explode a bomb. I'm sorry, but if having dark skin and walking out of a suspect house with an anorak on and running away when challenged by plain-clothes officers, possibly brandishing a weapon, is just cause for being shot in the head, then the terrorists have achieved their aim.

I drive to work with a Hindu colleague. A gentler, more compassionate guy you couldn't meet. His concern over recent events and the possible backlash against himself and his family has become more obvious as the days have passed. Our boss wants him to go on a course in Glasgow, Manchester or Reading shortly and he's scared out of his whits at boarding a train with a suitcase.

Petseri wrote:Should we imply that you find 9/11 insignificant?

No. Certainly not.

But I do believe they've managed to overreact to something that, when it happened, I'd have thought would be almost impossible to overreact to.

Brideoffrankenstein wrote:I was pretty shocked that they got the wrong person too, they seemed pretty convinced that that guy was involved with the bombs. I still don't understand why he ran away though if he was innocent

Hmm. About a month ago I was wandering through a station in Moscow, carrying bags and cases and trying to work out where the new left-luggage office had gone when a policeman walking behind me started to say something. Since I don't speak much Russian I ignored him and kept going so he followed me. Turned out he was trying to point out my lace was loose (which I already knew and was ignoring).

Presumably on a tube I could expect someone to start shooting at me.

From what I seemed to have heard the guy that's been shot dead was a Brazilian electrician who had been working in the UK for some years...
Working in the UK would mean his English would most probably have been better than your Russian, or not?

But, I'd agree, I don't hear/see people often too, because I do not want to (or because my iPod is to loud ), would like to get shot because of that

Perhaps his English would have been better (though having met some electricians, perhaps not!), but you can see my point.

It would be hard to live somewhere and be less competent in the language than I am in Russian!

well i stand by what i said earlier. it's a tragedy that an innocent man got shot but surely another bomb on a crowded tube train would have been a greater tragedy?

no matter what reason this chap might have had to want to avoid contact with the police i will never understand a thought process which responds to "stop! armed police!" with "nah, i think i'll just run into this train station, hurdle the ticket barrier and take my chances."

So you don't think that the apparent introduction of summary execution into English law is any kind of a deterioration in the quality of our society?

I think we'd have to agree to differ here.

I said it was going to be the wrong person.
*tsk tsk*

Where will it end?

andymackem wrote:So you don't think that the apparent introduction of summary execution into English law is any kind of a deterioration in the quality of our society?

I think we'd have to agree to differ here.

we wouldn't have to agree to differ at all if that were the case. this was not a summary execution. this was the result of a split-second decision by highly-trained officers that the suspect posed an imminent danger to the public. that they were wrong is regrettable but understandable.

hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I listened to a fair amount of radio in the past 24 hours, mostly 5 live and 4, and obviously there was a lot of coverage of the Stockwell thing. It seemed clear to me that virtually every speaker from the police wanted to say that it was partly the Brazilian guy's fault, if he'd stopped as ordered then he'd still be here. But none of them did - they "can't" say it because that would be seen as saying that it wasn't their fault.
(My interpretation obviously)

Seems a bit mad to me, if ever there was a time for not pussy footing around and worrying about upsetting someone's feelings then I'd say it was now.

A split-second decision after he had been apprehended? A split-second decision to shoot him in the head five times at point-blank range while holding him to the floor of the carriage? (according to eye-witness reports, I wasn't there).

This doesn't make me feel any safer using the tube: I'm probably now more concerned about drawing myself to the attentions of the police than I am about being blown up by a mad muslim.

And now it appears, they watched him get on a bus. So what did he do after that to make them suspect he was a suicide bomber?

andymackem wrote:A split-second decision after he had been apprehended? A split-second decision to shoot him in the head five times at point-blank range while holding him to the floor of the carriage? (according to eye-witness reports, I wasn't there).

from what i can tell, this version of events is based on the testimony of one eye-witness and yet it seems to have been accpeted in many quarters as fact. i struggle to believe that this is exactly what happened but then i've never subscribed to the "all police are bastards" theory.

This doesn't make me feel any safer using the tube: I'm probably now more concerned about drawing myself to the attentions of the police than I am about being blown up by a mad muslim.

my advice: don't jump the ticket barrier in the near future!

Francis wrote:And now it appears, they watched him get on a bus. So what did he do after that to make them suspect he was a suicide bomber?

from what i can gather: he failed to stop when challenged. or rather he ran from the police, hurdled over a ticket barrier and tried to get away on a train.

RicheyJames wrote:

Francis wrote:And now it appears, they watched him get on a bus. So what did he do after that to make them suspect he was a suicide bomber?

from what i can gather: he failed to stop when challenged. or rather he ran from the police, hurdled over a ticket barrier and tried to get away on a train.

But why did they challenge him after he'd got off the bus?

Presumably there will be an inquest into the Brazilian guy's death? I may sound naive but we'll have to have faith that the British justice system will get to the bottom of this.

RicheyJames wrote:

andymackem wrote:A split-second decision after he had been apprehended? A split-second decision to shoot him in the head five times at point-blank range while holding him to the floor of the carriage? (according to eye-witness reports, I wasn't there).

from what i can tell, this version of events is based on the testimony of one eye-witness and yet it seems to have been accpeted in many quarters as fact. i struggle to believe that this is exactly what happened but then i've never subscribed to the "all police are bastards" theory.

This doesn't make me feel any safer using the tube: I'm probably now more concerned about drawing myself to the attentions of the police than I am about being blown up by a mad muslim.

my advice: don't jump the ticket barrier in the near future!

Francis wrote:And now it appears, they watched him get on a bus. So what did he do after that to make them suspect he was a suicide bomber?

from what i can gather: he failed to stop when challenged. or rather he ran from the police, hurdled over a ticket barrier and tried to get away on a train.

I don't think anyone is saying all police are bastards. Just that quite possibly, these ones were.

I rode to work today in this:



I think that makes everything okay in the world, don't you?

That's what I like about you Corpy. You're always right there with your finger on the pulse of the thread.

It was silver and shiny.

Have you spent it yet?

Nope. I'm saving it for a special occasion.

Red interior.

I'm just trying to distract everyone from the fact that I mostly agree with RJ in this instance, although I often subscribe to the "most police are bastards" theory.