Possible new terrorist attack in London

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AMGeed said:
I'm not disputing this, but are you sure Mike?

The IRA were active from '69 - 2001 but since then apart from a couple of anti Israeli attacks, its been Islamic incidents.
2 attacks in 2013, 1 in 2015, and now 5 in 2017 so far doesn't indicate it being at its lowest level to me.
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If talking about terror attacks.... then yes we should consider the various IRA attacks, those made by Palestinians (typically against Israeli and Jewish organisations), those orchestrated/inspired by Al-Qaida/ISIS - but also the Iranian embassy hostage taking incident in 1980 perpetrated by Iranian dissidents with support from Iraq, and I would argue also the 'London nail bomber' David Copeland who planted three bombs across London in 1999 (targeting gays and ethnic minorities).
 
grober said:
MikeInWimbledon
You are right to highlight the other major causes of death but they need context to make sense. If mediated by age for example that diagram would change markedly for say those under 30. That said I would confidently predict road traffic traffic accidents would be at the top of causes of death for that age group . Ironically terrorism will have had altered that dynamic slightly because prior to its start public transport would be the safest mode of transport for those under 30- probably still is statistically- but the odds will have shortened slightly- particularly for city dwellers.
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It's not the number of deaths... is the circumstances.

16 Primary school children and one teacher died in the Dunblane massacre in 1996... and we are still rightly shocked and outraged. The fact that far more children died in car crashes every year since, or from preventable infections, etc, does not diminish the pain.

Terror attacks are horrifying precisely because they are meant to be... that's why they are called 'terror' attacks. Not because of the causality maths.
 
By co-incidence I was at a Terrorism seminar on Thursday and the Acting Head of NaCTSO was there (nice chap)
Getting the bits for a bomb is not difficult - getting it made into a reliable device is thankfully the tricky bit

But they are flat out on leads and halting plans 24/7 - which was great to hear, but scary to reflect upon....
 
AMGeed said:
I'm not disputing this, but are you sure Mike?

The IRA were active from '69 - 2001 but since then apart from a couple of anti Israeli attacks, its been Islamic incidents.
2 attacks in 2013, 1 in 2015, and now 5 in 2017 so far doesn't indicate it being at its lowest level to me.
Click to expand...

This chart details deaths, not incidents - some real shockers that seem to get forgotten over time:

terrorattacks.jpg

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How many people are killed by terrorist attacks in the UK?
 
Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner.....

OK, so the IRA are special: I have Irish Catholic AND Protestant Grandmothers, and IRA London Bombs were definitely "on my Manor, " with friends and colleagues being near, but not slain, by Christian bombs.

We may have forgotten but the Christians were blowing up pubs, restaurants, shops and hotels on the Mainland at quite a pace in the 80's and 90's

But we also had Angry Brigade, Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs and Anarchists blowing up and killing another.

And other killers like Michael Ryan, bumping off 16 in Hungerford in '87, so ending casual club shooting in the UK.

Not as many as Mainland Europe, of course, but still the trend is clearly down.

And if we stopped dropping bombs on Islamic countries it'd be even lower.
 
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I'm wondering about the motivation behind some of these incidents. While it could be argued that it is religious idiology that is prompting these attacks, how many are being perpetrated by individuals who also want to seek some sort of notoriety (ie. their 15 minutes of fame).
 
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