General Chat

One day last week my son a Metropolitan Police officer had to chase 4 individuals onto a train at Canary Wharf. Nothing to do with terrorism. But he said if you had seen the looks of fear on the faces of the poor passengers on that train, he could have cried for them. That said, he had a lot of assistance from people, One man held the train door open and some other passengers pointed out to him the four people who had run onto the train. Not an enviable job at the moment. Linda

Thank you Pat, as ever the voice of reason. It is a very emotive subject and as usual we tend to get hot under the collar. I am sure we most of us agree that the police have a terrible job to do with this and we are behind them all the way. i also feel that (as the police themselves have said) they need to have an internal investigation if only to put peoples minds at rest. One thing, on the news tonight it was said that it is not even certain that he didn't have a visa. It could turn out that he is not an illegal immigrant. Our problem is that the news is changing by the hour so we should be wary of jumping to conclusions. I also agree with those who have said that there is no need for aggression when debating. Please remember that what leaves your fingers as, to you, an innocent comment ca be misconstrued by others as aggressive. Ann Glos

Thank you Pat. You too Anne, for your request for courtesy. Fortunately for me, I'm not generally fazed by unpleasant comments aimed at me from a distance but some others are and a lot of time is spent on these boards with the need for apologies and so on. As Jeanie said, this is a topic that deserves debate and all sides are demeaned by rudeness. Best wishes to all the sons and daughters and husbands and wives who make up the police force. They do have a very difficult job.

Well, Em C, you're not the first to tell me what I do and don't understand, and I doubt you'll be the last.

It is very easy to only see one side or another of this argument, I have such mixed feelings on both sides. But my overwhelming feeling, is that if I was his Mother I would never ever be able to close my eyes with out the picture of his last moments. If he had been a bomber then it was better one life than many, but he was not, and it is easy to have an opinion as long as it is not a member of our own family being shot. Who could picture their own son lieing there, and say it is ok because he may have been a bomber. Maybe in all sides we need to walk in other peoples shoes to see if it hurts?

Tony Blair said at his news conference that the man was working here legally. D

There's more to this than meets the eye. The Sunday Telegraph reported that he was an illegal immigrant. He was followed to the underground where he was challenged whereupon he vaulted the barrier ( a considerable feat) and ran down to a waiting train closely followed by police who shot him as he careered into the carriage and fell. He was wearing a hoody anorak as did the real bombers Think I will wait for the full facts to emerge but cannot help but be on the side of the police in the meantime ..... and wondering what I would have done under the circumstance. I hope I would have had the guts to close with a person who I believed had a body-belt of high explosive under his anorak. Len

Len, Apart from your last sentence, I agree iwth you all the way. I'd like to know more about the man's movements between his home in Tulse Hill and the shooting at Stockwell Underground station. Knowing the area very well, what I've heard so far about buses and the fact that he ran for a tube train seem odd to me. I wonder where he was going? If he was waiting for a bus outside Stockwell tube station, the bus would have been heading towards Central London, not Tulse Hill to the South, and if he'd been waiting for a bus on the opposite side of the road to go to Tulse Hill, he'd have probably been knocked down by traffic if he tried to run across the road to get to the tube station - it's a very busy main road. No tube train from Stockwell goes to Tulse Hill (Tulse Hill has no Underground station), and Stockwell is only one station South of the Oval, where one of the most recent bomb incident occurred. There is definitely more to come out about this story. CB >|<

Be very careful what you chose to believe from things you read in the press ... ever heard the expression 'never let the facts stand in the way of a good story'? Patience guys, patience ... we'll find out more eventually. Jane

Jane, I'm not basing what I say on newspapers for that very reason. I prefer to believe what I've seen and heard from eyewitnesses interviewed on TV immediately after the event, the statements issued on TV by the Met Police, the Prime Minister and the Mayor of London, plus my own knowledge of the area where the incident occurred. There has to be more to this story than the public have been told so far. CB >|<

May I comment? Last October I was walking to the back door (outside )of our classroom. Out of nowhere came two SWAT team members who shouted something to me then kicked the door closed. I have NO idea what they said to me I was in shock! I knew that they said something about getting the kids into the Gym, but if I had to relay the exact words I wouldn't be able to. When I first saw them I FROZE, it's not everyday you come face to face with two men armed with sub machine guns. My brain didn't process it all at the time. (The school was put on lockdown because of a phone call that had been made to the RCMP.) My point is, when a person is startled the first reaction is to FREEZE, out of fear. Deb