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I was listening to the news reports on the way down south tonight, sounded to me like the blokes soup was too hot. Now the truth is revealed, a fake ciggy!
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This morning it sounded a bit ominous and then it turns out nothing to worry about. Are you allowed to smoke electronic cigarettes on public transport. If not then this could have been avoided if they'd resisted the need for nicotine.
But we should be glad the response was as it was - something suspicious and it is dealt with. Better than ignoring it and finding out it was something deadly in their possession.
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Or someone could simply have asked the chap to explain the situation...
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>>But we should be glad the response was as it was - something suspicious and it is dealt with.
>>Better than ignoring it and finding out it was something deadly in their possession.
Oh Em Gee.
I sat next to somebody with a fake cigarette the other day. Should I have called the police just in case too?
Humph for PM, I say.
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Did the motorway really need to be closed for 'more than 4 hours'?
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>> Did the motorway really need to be closed for 'more than 4 hours'?
>>
No.
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>> >> Did the motorway really need to be closed for 'more than 4 hours'?
>> >>
>>
>> No.
>>
>>
Yes. You cannot be too careful you know. It might have been a bomb.
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>> Yes. You cannot be too careful you know. It might have been a bomb.
Indeed. But you'd have thought those army chaps would have taken less than 4 hours to tell the difference between a fake cigarette and a bomb.
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>> less than 4 hours
>>
Roger Bannister would have run a mile (in less than four minutes).
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They will have taken a lot less than 4 hours to spot that, but they wouldn't have been there for the whole 4 hours. I think there is an EOD unit in the West Midlands, but it might have taken a while for them to get there.
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Fair enough, although 4 hours was the time for which the road was closed so at least includes the time taken for the police to get there and decide it was a 'major incident' or whatever.
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Maybe this was a diversion for some other surveillance. Maybe known suspects were being followed and the security services needed an excuse to shut the M6 toll to narrow down options. Who knows? but the 4 hours seems extreme for what turned out.
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>> Fair enough, although 4 hours was the time
>>
It seems the BBC got the time figure wrong.
Reports now say "the motorway closed for more than six hours before police finally revealed the alert had been triggered by 'a health improvement aid for smokers'"
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I agree with you on that, they didn't all turn up at the same time. Someone there first must have thought it all needed, I wasn't there so I'm trying not to knock them without all the facts, but it's odd that it got so many people involved for so long.
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>> But we should be glad the response was as it was - something suspicious and
>> it is dealt with. Better than ignoring it and finding out it was something deadly
>> in their possession.
>>
The country would come to a standstill if "something suspicious" was routinely dealt with in this way.
24 hour news channels had live helicopter coverage, with the studio armchair experts having nothing to do but conjure up all kinds of theories and hypothetical terrorist possibilities imaginable for them to discuss to fill in the time.
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the powers that be are testing the systems...stand down ...go to bed
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And then everybody calls me a "Racist" when I say I have a Natural phobia/ distrust of folk that look to be of Islamic origins!!
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>> And then everybody calls me a "Racist" when I say I have a Natural phobia/
>> distrust of folk that look to be of Islamic origins!!
Are you saying that the fake fag smoker looked 'foreign'? All I've seen is a request in the Mail piece for help identifying him.
Last edited by: Focus on Thu 5 Jul 12 at 21:41
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I guess there's a 50% chance he/she/they look foreign.
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Right, so we are tossing up coins now?
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Do try to get the joke Zeddo. Seems you're being particularly picky today. Something up?
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>> Do try to get the joke Zeddo. Seems you're being particularly picky today. Something up?
I was feeding you a line. your response should have been
"Correct change only please"
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I think the person was right to alert the authorities if someone was behaving suspiciously. And it sounds like the 'smoker' was. And for the authorities to turn up in force.
What I don't get is how it went on for so long. Could have been dealt with very quickly and the motorway reopened.
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Where's Bruce Willis when you need him?
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What we should all realise is there is stuff going on all the time that we know nothing about because it is not reported. I was in a government building last week and security had been raised because of an incident. Won't post details I was told about.
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>I was in a government building last week and security had been raised because of an incident.
I work at an EU site that mirrors the threat levels set by JTAC. There has been no change from "moderate" for ages.
The response to this M6 incident was so OTT that it looks like a planned exercise.
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No my example was for the actual building I was in. Something had happened that day/week. So they raised the threat level for the building. It was not a general increase over all sites.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Thu 5 Jul 12 at 23:51
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There you go Focus.
www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=T4gPT6MoIF4
I am not sure if this really is the person (or how true the events were) but if he is then there's your five minutes of fame.
Last edited by: diddy1234 on Fri 6 Jul 12 at 14:35
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>> And then everybody calls me a "Racist" when I say I have a Natural phobia/
>> distrust of folk that look to be of Islamic origins!!
>>
Don't ever travel on the tube in London then. You will see brown skinned "masked"[*] persons carrying backpacks all the time.
[*] = goo.gl/O2qN7
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It looks like the reason for the Police being super-vigilant was:
news.sky.com/story/956908/seven-terror-arrests-after-guns-found-in-car
".. A force spokesman said the arrests "followed a routine stop of a vehicle by police on the M1 motorway in South Yorkshire on June 30".
The car was impounded on suspicion of having no insurance but the driver and passenger were not detained by South Yorkshire Police.
The spokesman said: "Firearms, offensive weapons and other material were later found hidden inside, prompting police to take action to trace and arrest the driver, passenger and others suspected of being involved."
...
Sky's crime correspondent Martin Brunt said if the car had not been searched the men may not have been traced and subsequently arrested. "
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The police are on alert prior to the Olympics.
Can anyone blame them?
A few bombs going off before the Olympics would lead to security checkpoints in London and huge crowd control problems.. (no need to bomb the Olympics: a threat backed by tangible action would do)
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I'm already a bit bored with the olympics. Sorry but I am. Going to be a right pain getting into and around about London.
I'd like them to permanently hold them in Greece. It's their fault after all...
:-)
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Greece is already paying for their fault :-)
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>> I'm already a bit bored with the olympics. Sorry but I am. Going to be
>> a right pain getting into and around about London.
>>
>> I'd like them to permanently hold them in Greece. It's their fault after all...
>>
>> :-)
>>
+1
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Extraordinary, isn't it. You take 7 men and fly them to Pakistan (or wherever) and train them for months, and fly them back again, and house them, and smuggle in explosives and buy guns etc. etc. etc. at the cost of probably hundreds of thousands of pounds.
And then you save £500 by not buying car insurance.
And blow the whole scheme open.
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>> And blow the whole scheme open.
>>
only because after 3 days of remaining uncollected from the pound, some bright Bobby or impound employee decided to check what was in the car.
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Oh yes, like all good plans it takes bad luck to be caught out.
But not paying your insurance is called making your own bad luck...
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Occupation: Terrorist
Use: Social, domestic and blowing up half of the street.
I expect the premium was too high.
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So they didn't both with Road Side Assist breakdown cover either then.
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Armed police, sniffer dogs, bomb disposal units, and at least 18 fire crews were part of the emergency services' response to the M6 Toll coach incident on Thursday. Staffordshire Police, who led the response, would not confirm figures, but aerial images give some sense of the scale of the response. From images and reports, we have estimated the minimum numbers of those involved.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18738402
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If we ignore the shutting of the motorway for 6 hours, it was an excellent training exercise for the boys. I bet they had more fun than probably ever in their careers, many of them.
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Sounds like another good reason not to use the M6 Toll road!
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>> Sounds like another good reason not to use the M6 Toll road!
Believe me, you didn't want to be on the M6 non toll that day!
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What's the etiquette with electronic cigarettes?
www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18734753
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"It is inconceivable that anyone I'd invite would own an electronic cigarette. But if they did I would sit close and blow smoke at them."
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The fake cigarette might have been an obvious decoy, and a real bomb hidden somewhere else, timed to go off after the security people had arrived.
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>The fake cigarette might have been an obvious decoy, and a real bomb hidden somewhere else,
>timed to go off after the security people had arrived.
So 48 passengers were kept onboard the bus for more than an hour and a half to see if it was going to explode later? I don't buy that.
Daily Mail - "48 Passengers Killed in Bus Explosion after they are kept Onboard by Armed Police"
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>> kept onboard the bus for more than an hour
They weren't. They were made to sit on the road and forbidden (at gunpoint presumably) to talk to each other.
Time was that old bill was usually led on the spot by someone with a bit of intelligence. That is no longer allowed. Everything gets referred to a spectacle-wearing twozzer in a control room miles away. I've seen this in action at carnival, and it makes your heart sink.
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>They weren't.
No?
"The driver was on his phone for ages, but said nothing to us about what was going on. Some people went up to the driver and tried to get off the bus, but he told them they weren't allowed.
After an hour and a half we noticed armed police behind us."
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-18728246
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This is an incredibly pathetic and stupid incident. Typical, alas, of our country today.
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is it legal to smoke these fake ciggies in a pub? even fake pubs like witherspoons?
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>> even fake pubs like witherspoons?
>>
What's fake about Wetherspoons? Why don't you like them?
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Of course it wouldn't have happened at all if people were still allowed to smoke. Are there still any civilised countries in the developed world though? I'm afraid not.
Tchah! (cough cough hawk spit)
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WEST MIDLANDS IN 'LOCKDOWN' FOR 24 HOURS AFTER TOURIST APPROACHES POLICEMAN FOR DIRECTIONS AND TIME
Visitor 'appeared disoriented and foreign', WMPS spokesman says.
'If they don't seem to know where they are or what time it is, the new guidelines recommend immediate preventive arrest and the deployment of all emergency services. Better safe than sorry where national security is at issue' - Home Secretary
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Looking at the M6 Toll incident in isolation then just perhaps it could be construed as overreaction. However with the M1 incident where firearms were recovered, and other interventions, then looking back to 7/7 I believe that we are not in a position to make any such judgements.
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It's easy to be an armchair warrior in circumstances like this including endless analysis from Her Majesty's Press - Someone has to make a snap decision, make the wrong one and the press and the courts will have you for dinner, go the other way and the press and the public dine out on you...and all the professional and amateur analysts sniping in 20.20 vision......the decision was made based on the facts that were available, with the shadow of the Samsung Olympics and the anniversary of 7/7 - terrorists have to be lucky once the security services have to be lucky every time. The decision would have been made at Gold level of an accountable public service - next year that Gold command will have a Political dickhead snapping at his heels.
Last edited by: R.P. on Sat 7 Jul 12 at 21:48
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>> looking back to 7/7 I believe that we are not in a position to make any such judgements.
I wasn't just sniping at old bill Fc, but all of us - the sort of society we have become, over-regulated and a tiny bit hysterical. There is a terrorist threat, and it's no joke having to try to ward it off.
But listen: I've been pulled in third world countries, twice that I can remember, as a potential security threat. On these tiresome occasions it is always a great relief to meet an intelligent man with the authority to release one.
I have the depressing feeling that if that ever happened here, the intelligent front-line officer wouldn't have the authority and would have to refer back up the line to some distant commander who didn't have the faintest idea what was going on. I've seen it happening, and indeed leading to trouble. Not necessarily the fault of the police at all, but they are sucked in and infected by the new, faffing orthodoxy. The orthodoxy that let those last toerag riots get right out of control for example. It isn't good.
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Much to do with the blame and accountability culture. Not that I'm saying that our services should not be accountable. Take the Stockwell tube shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes as an example. No one wants to get it wrong.
Over many years I learned that you could make the biggest meal of anything and not get criticism. Take a shortcut to get the job done, get it wrong and you would get hung out to dry. That's the food of bureaucracy.
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It isn't really clear what happened on that bus. Did vapour start leaking out of a piece of overhead luggage causing anxiety among the passengers, and did the driver forbid the owner of the luggage to open it, and the owner obey the driver, with all his crushing official authority, instead of opening the case and showing everyone that it was just a damn vapour lollipo? Or was it a sensor in the luggage hold?
Whatever happened it was incredibly damn silly.
And the police do close motorways for far too long, even after fatal crashes let alone total non-incidents like this one. They don't do it anywhere else. Foreigners are more practical and not nearly as silly as us.
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>> Menezes
I understood poor Menezes was an example of what I was talking about: armed officers being faffed at through earpieces from miles away by a commander getting it all in random bits and pieces through screens and radio, instead of being allowed to make their own decisions.
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Lud's right that sometimes you have to trust those on the ground. But if they are wrong then there have to be consequences. No loose cannons in this country please.
>> Whatever happened it was incredibly damn silly.
Why didn't the person who called the police ask/investigate a bit. I would have. And wouldn't the person 'smoking' not have realised what was going on and offered info... I suppose they could have been listening to music.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Sun 8 Jul 12 at 00:39
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>> >> Menezes
>>
>> I understood poor Menezes was an example of what I was talking about: armed officers
>> being faffed at through earpieces from miles away by a commander getting it all in
>> random bits and pieces through screens and radio, instead of being allowed to make their
>> own decisions.
>>
My understanding also.
I also understand he ran after being told 'Armed Police - Stand still' That's never a good idea.
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>> My understanding also.
>> I also understand he ran after being told 'Armed Police - Stand still' That's never
>> a good idea.
Sometimes non natural English speakers have trouble with English, especially under stress. And I don't suppose "Armed Police" "Stand Still" is taught in many language schools, but most importantly rarely heard on British streets or general conversation!
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It's in almost every Hollywood film though ! Mind you should armed officers carry a phrase book so they can shout it in 52 languages ? :-) (joke btw)*
*In case the dynamic duo of May and Winsor are reading
Last edited by: R.P. on Sun 8 Jul 12 at 10:51
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Always wondered about the cultural issue though. I lived in Brazil at one time and believe me, the people you really wanted to avoid contact with (apart from the muggers and bandits) were the police. Different place. Back then anyway.
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I think I've worked it out.
It was all a premediated act by the manufacturers of electronic cigarettes. Now everybody in the country knows they're legal to "smoke" indoors.
Easy. Get a foreign-looking person to smoke one out of a carrierbag, and get somebody else to make a panic-stricken telephone call.
Loads of free advertising... (given presumably(?) advertising them is illegal?)
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M6 toll bus terrorist scare - Zero
