Brian
Eating fat, staying slim
Very true. This is something currently being made worse by social media. It’s a ticking time bomb, people don’t realise what they’re doing. It can only get worse.
David Amess MP stabbed in Leigh-On-Sea
- Thread starter farfromthesun
- Start date
PaulMB
pfm Member
So your father was right!
foxwelljsly
Me too, I ate one sour too.
Utterly bizarre target for assassination. I don't agree with much of his politics or his moral perspective, but he seemed a decent and principled man. Anti foxhunting and founder of the all party group on endometriosis.
Very obviously neither terrorism or political assassination, but yet another victim of that lethal combination of superstition and psychotic delusion.
Very obviously neither terrorism or political assassination, but yet another victim of that lethal combination of superstition and psychotic delusion.
TheDecameron
Unicorns fart glitter.
I hadn’t looked at the MP’s voting record other than references to it here because for me it’s completely irrelevant. He is a murder victim.
Seeker_UK
Feelin' nearly faded as my jeans
Given we can't recruit enough police to meet current demand, who else is going to provide regulated security if it's needed? Enthusiastic amateurs?
PaulMB
pfm Member
I don't know exactly what he has in mind, but it might, rather, be a way of not giving extra work to the police. It all depends, I suppose, on where the money to pay the private security companies comes from.
Tony L
Administrator
Hired goons, appropriately Mugabe-esque.
MVV
pfm Member
The imagery around this is getting weird, Dianaesque Union Jack shrine stuff! They are mad.
Nick_G
pfm Member
Seeker_UK
Feelin' nearly faded as my jeans
Lol. Hired regulated goons from G4S, Mitie, Securitas, Loomis et al protecting MPs of every political party.
What's your solution? Further overburden the police? Hope everyone just gets along and doesn't stab any more MPs? MPs adopt the US approach to things and stop holding surgeries?
Hiring private security is probably the only way of doing this.
Darren L
Egalitarian
They already do, I turned on the BBC news channel on Saturday on seeing this thread as I had missed the news on Friday night. There was an interview with a security consultant who provides advice and other services to MPs, he said while many security measures were on offer to MPs not all of them were interested in taking the various security measures on offer.
Didn't the Govt cut budgets and get rid of thousands of Police not long ago ? I'm sure this will end up costing more. And be armed ?
Tony L
Administrator
It is a trace risk. Jo Cox was killed for the views she held by a far-right political terrorist. The only political murder victim since the days of the IRA/UDF etc. David Amess, it would appear, was killed by an Islamist nutter, just as were the people who died at the Ariana Grande Manchester gig, on London Bridge, on the Tube and busses on 7/11 etc. Are you saying everyone should have a bodyguard? Where do I get mine? To my mind the political classes should just STFU and get on with doing a job that already pays best part of three times the national average wage plus huge expenses as-is. Stop trying to waste even more of our money and using any excuse to ramp up state authoritarianism. If they don’t like being in the public spotlight then they shouldn’t take the money. David Amess is no different or better than anyone else who died at the hands of religious terrorism. It is what it is, a very, very minor risk factor in modern life that we all face. Like everyone else I’m upset about his death, but he’s no different to any of the Manchester Arena victims or anyone else. Religious terrorism, like all terrorism sucks, but it is sadly part of human reality.
Stuart Frazer
pfm Member
Protecting 650 MPs 24/7 will either be a very difficult or an enormous cost to the taxpayer for security.
That reminds me: can we reduce them to 400 or so ? Surely more than enough to rubber stamp stuff.
Tony L
Administrator
I don’t trust this shower to do anything honestly, they’d just redraw boundaries to suit their long-term aims even more.
Would private security guards be allowed to carry guns etc.I thought they had no more right to carry guns etc than any member of the public (even if they do like to dress to intimidate in semi paramilitary style "uniforms") What could possibly go wrong - as the saying goes !.
Before you know it they'll all be wearing Brown Shirts
Before you know it they'll all be wearing Brown Shirts
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
Strange that when it comes to Tory project to fund the private sector that no questions are asked about where the money comes from. It is only public services that need to be costed it seems.
Seeker_UK
Feelin' nearly faded as my jeans
Not sure why you make the distinction between a "political" murder and "Islamist" murder. Murder is murder. I suggest that David Amess was targeted because he was a politician, a public figure, and not your average Joe.
From the same place they'll get theirs from, a security firm. Your money will be as good as theirs.
If you want to ramp up authoritarianism, isolate the political classes even further from those who vote them in. It means they have even less empathy for those they make the laws for.
Let's assume you get your way and MPs don't get the security nor the money. What do you think will happen? Well, the death threats will almost certainly continue and probably scare off a lot of people who would consider a career as an MP meaning the only ones who stay in the game are either happy to take the risk going it alone (unlikely) and only those with the money to afford their own "hired goons" or can find some suitably beefy mates (like the EDL do) or, for fear of going full Godwin, create their own security force. Not necessarily the types you want in those jobs.
You need to separate the job from the person. Like it or not, a politician has a job that is more important than ours and the consequences of them being targeted will be much higher than if you or I to be killed. Therefore, they need a bit more protection than us.
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