The Theresa May General Election thread (edited)

Fretwired

Scales of the terror threat .. from the Times

Huge scale of terror threat revealed: UK home to 23,000 jihadists

Intelligence officers have identified 23,000 jihadist extremists living in Britain as potential terrorist attackers, it emerged yesterday.

The scale of the challenge facing the police and security services was disclosed by Whitehall sources after criticism that multiple opportunities to stop the Manchester bomber had been missed.

About 3,000 people from the total group are judged to pose a threat and are under investigation or active monitoring in 500 operations being run by police and intelligence services. The 20,000 others have featured in previous inquiries and are categorised as posing a “residual risk”.

The two terrorists who have struck in Britain this year — Salman Abedi, the Manchester bomber, and Khalid Masood, the Westminster killer — were in the pool of “former subjects of interest” and no longer subject to any surveillance.

Ben Wallace, the security minister, told The Times that the existence of a database of thousands of potential attackers was a stark illustration of the magnitude of the threat. “This reveals the scale of the challenge from terrorism in the 21st century,” he said. “Never has it been more important to invest in intelligence-led policing.”

MI5’s capacity to investigate is limited to about 3,000 individuals at any one time. People are added to and removed from the group of “live” suspects depending on assessments of who poses the greatest risk. When an investigation is closed, the people identified drop into a growing group whose risk is seen as reduced.

Sources say that the pool of “former subjects of interest” has swollen to 20,000 during the years of Islamist threat since 2001.

There is concern that the intelligence agencies have been poor at detecting former subjects of interest who return to extremism.

Raffaello Pantucci, director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute, said that the figures were “disturbing but not surprising”. He added: “For many of these people, the jihadist ideology never leaves them — it is very deeply ingrained.”

Anthony Glees, head of security and intelligence studies at the University of Buckingham, said: “To have 23,000 potential killers in our midst is horrifying. We should double the size of MI5, as we did in World War Two, and expand the number of intelligence-led police by thousands. We can’t go on as if this wasn’t happening.” Last night Ariana Grande, the American singer whose concert was targeted by Abedi, said she planned to return to Manchester to stage a benefit concert for the victims. Liam Gallagher will donate profits from his first solo gig next week to victims.

ICBM

Now ask yourself which party wants to increase police resources and numbers, and which party has cut police resources and numbers...

That alone should tell you which party really has a better idea of how to defend this country where it matters.

Fretwired

ICBM said:

Now ask yourself which party wants to increase police resources and numbers, and which party has cut police resources and numbers...

That alone should tell you which party really has a better idea of how to defend this country where it matters.

In fairness the ordinary police don't monitor jihadis. It's the security services and specialist police intelligence units which weren't cut. Lots of cash has gone into MI5 and specialist police units. The cuts have been to general back office staff, community police officers and ordinary policemen. If your house gets burgled don't expect any police to attend quickly.

The problem with Corbyn is where the cash and people will come from and a point that I raised earlier about not wanting to offend people. He wants the Prevent scheme scrapped and a different approach taken. I don't have a lot of faith in Corbyn's ability to deliver - the left are suspicious of the police and security forces. It wasn't that long ago that Corbyn's crew wanted MI5 shut down.

The man credited with writing Labour’s election manifesto endorsed a prospectus that included disbanding MI5 and disarming the police two years ago. Andrew Fisher, Jeremy Corbyn’s policy chief, has also previously called for Trident to be scrapped and for a halt to British drone strikes.

Myranda

ICBM said:

Now ask yourself which party wants to increase police resources and numbers, and which party has cut police resources and numbers...

That alone should tell you which party really has a better idea of how to defend this country where it matters.

And yet... 

It's very easy to say you want to spend more on police when you only planed less than 1/6th of your manifesto spending. 

Will they be able to afford their plans? Will thier plans bankrupt the country? Will Corbyn suffer more coup attempts from Ms? 

These are important questions. 

Equally important is Does May have a clue what is going on? Do the Conservative party really have any hard plans other than "leave EU"? Can she keep saying" Strong And Stable" the whole time or will even see start to get sick of it? 

This election is a choice between a shit sandwich or a shit pie... 

Drew_TNBD

Myranda said:

These are important questions. 

No they're not. Obviously the Tories are EVVVVIIIIILLLLLLLL and Labour are holy and are beyond reproach.

ICBM

Myranda said:

This election is a choice between a shit sandwich or a shit pie... 

I can't disagree with that .

However I'm less inclined to vote for the lot with a current proven track record of failure and more inclined to vote for the ones who at least want to try something slightly different. It's not pure blind optimism, just a reluctance to keep making the same mistakes over and over.

Or at least I would if my vote would make the slightest difference - it won't, where I live. So personally I'm going to vote for the best local candidate knowing he and his party will not win.

marantz1300

Drew_TNBD said:

Myranda said:

These are important questions. 

No they're not. Obviously the Tories are EVVVVIIIIILLLLLLLL and Labour are holy and are beyond reproach.

At last your talking sense.

Jalapeno

Corbyn's a bare-faced liar - he HAS met with the IRA, many times
https://order-order.com/2017/05/26/corbyn-lies-never-met-ira/

Corbyn's record on Terror over the years is pretty shabby too, also voted against the Falklands and 1st Gulf War - both were reactions to armed invasions - hard to see if there's any circumstance he'd allow use of force.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/26/revealed-jeremy-corbyns-three-decades-blocking-terror-legislation/

ICBM

Jalapeno said:

Corbyn's a bare-faced liar - he HAS met with the IRA, many times
https://order-order.com/2017/05/26/corbyn-lies-never-met-ira/

I assume he'll be playing the "they were members of Sinn Fein and not the IRA when I met them" card. At least one of them - Martin McGuinness - denied ever being a member of the IRA when it suited him too. (Which I don't believe.) I don't find Corbyn's excuses convincing either - but neither do I think it matters much any more. McGuinness became the most important Republican peacemaker in the end.

Jalapeno said:

also voted against the Falklands and 1st Gulf War - both were reactions to armed invasions

Yes, I disagree with him on those - because I don't believe peaceful means of resolving the situations would have worked. Sometimes wars have to be fought if the alternative is allowing aggression to prevail.

Fretwired

Interesting trawl though Facebook ... pretty much wall-to-wall anti Tory and May abuse, with some dubious stats being thrown around. No mention of Corbyn. Same thing on BBC radio this weekend - pretty much anti-Tory rant, especially the comedy. I wonder how much this is influencing people?

ToneControl

The dilemma I now face is whether to send off my postal vote with a vote for Labour "in spite" of Corbyn,
or to send it in "spoiled"

Fretwired

ToneControl said:

The dilemma I now face is whether to send off my postal vote with a vote for Labour "in spite" of Corbyn,
or to send it in "spoiled"

Corbyn ... never see the point of a spoiled paper. Although he's back to trying to lose again today.

Fretwired

Jeremy Corbyn blamed one of the IRA’s most notorious bombings on Britain’s “occupation” of Northern Ireland, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal. Does he really want to win the election?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/27/revealed-jeremy-corbyn-blamed-iras-poppy-day-massacre-british/


And Abbott is on form on the Marr show . Asked why she once opposed banning a list of groups including al Qaeda.

"There were groups on that list that I thought were dissidents not terrorist organisations," she says.

Asked if she regrets supporting the IRA, she replies:

"I had a rather splendid afro at the time. I don't have the same hairstyle and I don't have the same views. The hairstyle is gone, the views are gone."

octatonic

Fretwired said:

Scales of the terror threat .. from the Times

Huge scale of terror threat revealed: UK home to 23,000 jihadists

Intelligence officers have identified 23,000 jihadist extremists living in Britain as potential terrorist attackers, it emerged yesterday.

The scale of the challenge facing the police and security services was disclosed by Whitehall sources after criticism that multiple opportunities to stop the Manchester bomber had been missed.

About 3,000 people from the total group are judged to pose a threat and are under investigation or active monitoring in 500 operations being run by police and intelligence services. The 20,000 others have featured in previous inquiries and are categorised as posing a “residual risk”.

The two terrorists who have struck in Britain this year — Salman Abedi, the Manchester bomber, and Khalid Masood, the Westminster killer — were in the pool of “former subjects of interest” and no longer subject to any surveillance.

Ben Wallace, the security minister, told The Times that the existence of a database of thousands of potential attackers was a stark illustration of the magnitude of the threat. “This reveals the scale of the challenge from terrorism in the 21st century,” he said. “Never has it been more important to invest in intelligence-led policing.”

MI5’s capacity to investigate is limited to about 3,000 individuals at any one time. People are added to and removed from the group of “live” suspects depending on assessments of who poses the greatest risk. When an investigation is closed, the people identified drop into a growing group whose risk is seen as reduced.

Sources say that the pool of “former subjects of interest” has swollen to 20,000 during the years of Islamist threat since 2001.

There is concern that the intelligence agencies have been poor at detecting former subjects of interest who return to extremism.

Raffaello Pantucci, director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute, said that the figures were “disturbing but not surprising”. He added: “For many of these people, the jihadist ideology never leaves them — it is very deeply ingrained.”

Anthony Glees, head of security and intelligence studies at the University of Buckingham, said: “To have 23,000 potential killers in our midst is horrifying. We should double the size of MI5, as we did in World War Two, and expand the number of intelligence-led police by thousands. We can’t go on as if this wasn’t happening.” Last night Ariana Grande, the American singer whose concert was targeted by Abedi, said she planned to return to Manchester to stage a benefit concert for the victims. Liam Gallagher will donate profits from his first solo gig next week to victims.

Heartfeltdawn

Fretwired said:

Jeremy Corbyn blamed one of the IRA’s most notorious bombings on Britain’s “occupation” of Northern Ireland, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal. Does he really want to win the election?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/27/revealed-jeremy-corbyn-blamed-iras-poppy-day-massacre-british/


And Abbott is on form on the Marr show . Asked why she once opposed banning a list of groups including al Qaeda.

"There were groups on that list that I thought were dissidents not terrorist organisations," she says.

Asked if she regrets supporting the IRA, she replies:

"I had a rather splendid afro at the time. I don't have the same hairstyle and I don't have the same views. The hairstyle is gone, the views are gone."

Which is easily the most inspired answer she's given during the whole campaign. 

It smacks of real desperation on the side of the ST to take a Parliamentary motion that has been public for 30 years and to add that pissweak "can reveal" line in there, as if it's been covertly hidden for years and nobody knew. 

As said earlier, this is the major difference between Corbyn and May. Corbs knows what he's going to be hit by: IRA and terrorist sympathy. All stuff from his past that he's been hit with before. May on the other hand is being hit with recent things, predominantly from her manifesto. 

ICBM

Fretwired said:

Asked if she regrets supporting the IRA, she replies: 

"I had a rather splendid afro at the time. I don't have the same hairstyle and I don't have the same views. The hairstyle is gone, the views are gone."

To be fair, that's at least an honest answer - no denial that she did in fact support the IRA.

We all change, and some of us regret the more extreme things we said and did (and looked like ) when we were young…

Corbyn should be more honest too - I don't actually think it would do him any harm. To deny it looks evasive and can be proved to be at best a bending of the truth even if you buy the Sinn Fein/IRA argument.

Sinn Fein and the IRA were two sides of the same coin, as Ian Paisley always made sure he stated when referring to Sinn Fein - but the important point is that Paisley worked with McGuinness to bring peace, in the end.

rocktron

Fretwired said:

Interesting trawl though Facebook ... pretty much wall-to-wall anti Tory and May abuse, with some dubious stats being thrown around. No mention of Corbyn. Same thing on BBC radio this weekend - pretty much anti-Tory rant, especially the comedy. I wonder how much this is influencing people?

Ah!!!. . . .the Facebook generation who are easily influenced, who want to remain in the EU so that they can travel to European countries. Something they apparently haven't considered is that the rest of the world is not in the EU.

The traitorous BBC is doing everything in its power to unashamedly promote the EU, and I expect no less from left-wing comedians to be against the Conservatives.

The conservatives shot themselves in the foot by alienating their core supporters, the older generation and pensioners, who would vote for them in support of Brexit, anyway. This is at a time when Mrs. May called an election to gain a big majority for the primary purpose of her Brexit negotiations. They have a week to change people's perceptions of their manifesto policies, and time is running out.

23,000 Jihadis in this country - a product of handing out British Passports like sweeties. Vote for Labour, and Diane Abbott and Yvette Cooper would open the floodgates to all the illegal economic and child migrants in Calais, and to mass immigration. Where is the money, housing, schools, health service to support these people going to come from?

Incidentally, how many more foreign people do we need in the UK - 500,000, 1 million, 10 million, 50 million? At what point do we say enough is enough?

Labour proposes to do "wonderful" things without saying where the money is going to come from. What they propose is dubious. Tax and spend again. 

Politicians promise the world before an election only to find that they cannot deliver once they are in power.  

Myranda

rocktron said:

Fretwired said:

Interesting trawl though Facebook ... pretty much wall-to-wall anti Tory and May abuse, with some dubious stats being thrown around. No mention of Corbyn. Same thing on BBC radio this weekend - pretty much anti-Tory rant, especially the comedy. I wonder how much this is influencing people?

Ah!!!. . . .the Facebook generation who are easily influenced, who want to remain in the EU so that they can travel to European countries. Something they apparently haven't considered is that the rest of the world is not in the EU.

The traitorous BBC is doing everything in its power to unashamedly promote the EU, and I expect no less from left-wing comedians to be against the Conservatives.

The conservatives shot themselves in the foot by alienating their core supporters, the older generation and pensioners, who would vote for them in support of Brexit, anyway. This is at a time when Mrs. May called an election to gain a big majority for the primary purpose of her Brexit negotiations. They have a week to change people's perceptions of their manifesto policies, and time is running out.

23,000 Jihadis in this country - a product of handing out British Passports like sweeties. Vote for Labour, and Diane Abbott and Yvette Cooper would open the floodgates to all the illegal economic and child migrants in Calais, and to mass immigration. Where is the money, housing, schools, health service to support these people going to come from?

Incidentally, how many more foreign people do we need in the UK - 500,000, 1 million, 10 million, 50 million? At waht point do we say enough is enough.

Labour proposes to do "wonderful" things without saying where the money is going to come from. Tax and spend again. 

Politicians promise the world before an election only to find that they cannot deliver once they are in power.  

Arg! 

The UK isn't full. 
Of those 23000 large numbers were probably born her. 
Huge numbers of jobs are done by migrants. 

Angry shouty bullshit isn't truth. 

The BBC are not "traitors",  attacks on the press are for Donald Trump, Mussolini and Hitler... Don't be like them... The press is made up of people and people have opinions.


Elections and politics really bring out the twat in otherwise normal people. 

ToneControl

ICBM said:

Fretwired said:

Asked if she regrets supporting the IRA, she replies: 

"I had a rather splendid afro at the time. I don't have the same hairstyle and I don't have the same views. The hairstyle is gone, the views are gone."

To be fair, that's at least an honest answer - no denial that she did in fact support the IRA.

We all change, and some of us regret the more extreme things we said and did (and looked like ) when we were young…

Corbyn should be more honest too - I don't actually think it would do him any harm. To deny it looks evasive and can be proved to be at best a bending of the truth even if you buy the Sinn Fein/IRA argument.

Sinn Fein and the IRA were two sides of the same coin, as Ian Paisley always made sure he stated when referring to Sinn Fein - but the important point is that Paisley worked with McGuinness to bring peace, in the end.

the main thing Corbyn used to be praised for was his honesty
has he lost that claim?

ICBM

ToneControl said:

the main thing Corbyn used to be praised for was his honesty

has he lost that claim?

Every time he refuses to answer a straight question he's at serious risk of it, yes.

For example, when Andrew Neil asked him whether he supported the renewal of Trident - which everyone knows he doesn't - he should simply have said something like "No, and you know I don't. But it's currently Labour Party policy, it was voted for by Parliament, and I accept that." By not answering directly he looked dishonest and like the typical politician he's trying to separate himself from being.

He still comes across as more honest and willing to answer questions than May does by a long way though.