Labour left-winger Diane Abbott has been attacked by the Tories and their client media – including the Express – for claiming that Priti Patel wants to use “sonic booms” against asylum seekers as they cross the English Channel in small, flimsy boats.
But was she wrong?
Here’s what Ms Abbott wrote:
Our disgraceful Home Secretary Priti Patel wants to use sonic booms against desperate asylum seekers trying to cross the English channel in small boats pic.twitter.com/SYALxhcmWI
Long-Range Acoustic Devices (LRAD) are already installed on two Border Force vessels but are used to issue voice commands, the Home Office said.
However, Downing Street policy experts called for them to be used as sound cannons that emit loud, high-frequency noise powerful enough to induce vomiting.
So there was evidence to support what she was saying. Apparently these sound cannons can induce ear damage so bad that people could go permanently deaf.
But while Downing Street may have been all in favour of deafening people including refugees from Afghanistan who were abandoned in the UK’s withdrawal from that country last year, the Home Office denied that any such plan was being considered…
… after Ms Abbott made her claim.
Are you convinced by that?
Whatever the truth of the matter, the good news is that the Tory government cannot, now, use LRADs aboard Border Force ships in the way Ms Abbott described, without causing severe reputational harm to the Home Secretary and her department.
Refugees seeking asylum in the UK can take comfort from that – if from little else.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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Police investigations are ongoing at a property in Sunbury-on-Thames.
Now two people have been arrested in connection with the failed bomb attack at Parsons Green tube station – but This Writer is willing to bet that still isn’t enough to convince some of you that it was real.
The Vox Political Facebook feed is full of comments straight out of the tinfoil hat:
“This looks like a phones gone pop or laptop’s gone pop. English molehill mountain… No bomb damage just a burning bucket.”
That would be because the bomb didn’t explode; only the detonator. That’s why it only caused a fireball which swept through the train carriage and singed 30 people (some quite badly), rather than a conflagration that could have killed them all, along with many more.
“No scorch marks then? Handbag must be very strong to survive a blast that injured so many.”
This comment refers to the following image:
[Image: @RRigs].
Of course the side of the handbag that would have taken any damage is facing away from the camera. Also, a fireball would have gone upwards and travelled along the carriage’s ceiling, not outwards. Finally, we have no idea when the handbag was put there; the image was clearly taken after the detonator had been triggered but beyond that we have no idea of the context.
“Gonna get a Lidl’s bag they are indestructible.”
This refers to the fat that the device appeared to be in a plastic bag from the Lidl supermarket chain. Look at the image, though – it clearly wasn’t indestructible.
“If this device sent a fireball down the length of the carriage I don’t understand why there are no signs of any scorch marks in the immediate vicinity, and the white plastic container is in pristine condition.”
Because the flames went upwards, not outwards, as stated previously.
Here’s an image typical of the kind of ‘false flag’ meme going around. They claim that we’re being misled but This Writer’s belief is that they have been created to mislead:
In response, I wrote: “No, it’s the aftermath of a FAILED bomb. It didn’t go off, remember? The fireball was from the detonator. If the bomb had gone off, there would have been a LOT more damage and your sarcastic little meme would be in extremely poor taste.
Seriously, have a think about what has actually happened before posting nonsense like this.
In response to the concluding question: No; it looks like the aftermath of a FAILED bomb.”
Another commenter pointed out: “Flammable gas tends not to burn a lot of things if its source it cut off before it can cause anything else to combust. That’s why it’s so widely used as a ‘safe’ flame source in film and TV production.”
The nonsense goes on and on.
One commenter compared a victim being walked away from the site with a bandage around her head with someone dubbed a “crisis” actress – but the resemblance was only superficial. It was not the same person.
But the boneheads were out in force. Here’s another one: “It doesn’t matter if they are crisis actors or not. If we don’t know by now that the security services are complicit in these false flags then we really need to knock our own heads – preferably with something hard!”
Of course we don’t know anything of the sort and there is no evidence to suggest that our own security services took part in an attack on innocent UK citizens, which would be a contradictin of their own purpose.
What do the people who were injured have to say?
Here’s some sense from another commenter: “I think the facts must come from the people who were there. There WERE some serious burns, one man lost hair from the top of his head and his scalp was burned, on the initial interviews there were people with bandages on their heads and hands and burned clothing. The flames travelled down the carriage at roof level according to what I heard, and a lot of people will have ducked down which would be the natural response and would have been shielded by others less lucky.
“My OPINION – and that of others I have discussed it with, is that the explosion was actually much less serious than it was intended to be, and fortunately for the victims, something went wrong with it resulting in only a small explosion when a much larger one was planned.”
This opinion is shared by another commenter who happens to be friend of This Writer and a former member of the armed forces: “The influencing factor in most IEDs is not the explosive used but the containment of the explosive to build pressure while it burns up. Contain the explosive pressure for just long enough and you have a powerful bomb. Contain it for too long and it doesn’t explode at all, don’t control it for long enough and you get the equivalent of a magnesium flashpot – a short but intense localised burst of heat and light that’s capable of causing 1st/2nd degree burns and loss of hair on people standing close to it but not enough to cause damage to sturdier materials like hard plastics. This is what appears to have happened here and if so, any shrapnel included in the bomb would likely not have been expelled.”
The overwhelming chorus from the ‘false flag’ brigade is that the attempted bomb was a bid by the minority Conservative government to attack what’s left of our civil liberties.
But there’s one big problem with that: We already know that the UK’s ability to detect planned terror attacks has been whittled away by Theresa May and the minority Conservative government. There should be no support for any attempt to remove our remaining civil liberties because it would be the wrong response by this government to a situation for which this government is responsible.
In short: It is irrational to support oppressive measures proposed by a government to stop an emergency that it has created.
The ‘false flag’ brigade should think about that before parading their ignorance across the Internet.
There is another aspect to this story that has been seized and perverted by the ‘false flag’ people – the claim that the first man to be arrested had formerly been fostered by a couple who had looked after hundreds of children, including refugees. The claim is that MI5 had radicalised this 18-year-old in some way.
This Writer is keen to know how that is supposed to work. It seems more likely that, as a refugee, this person was recruited after leaving the care of Roger and Penelope Jones, but I’ll stand corrected if I have to. I suspect I’ll be waiting for confirmation of the story for a very long time.
A second man has been arrested in connection with Friday’s attack on a London Tube train, police said.
The 21-year-old man was arrested in Hounslow, west London, on Saturday night on suspicion of a terror offence and is in custody in south London.
An 18-year-old man is also being held on suspicion of a terror offence over the Parsons Green explosion.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd told the BBC that the second arrest suggests the attacker was not “a lone wolf”.
Police are searching a residential address in Stanwell, Surrey, in connection with the 21-year-old man’s arrest.
Police are continuing to search a house in Sunbury-on-Thames in Surrey.
It is thought the 18-year old, who was arrested in the port of Dover on Saturday morning, lives there.
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An image from a Twitter user of an alleged device on the train at Parsons Green tube [Image: @RRigs].
“Attack my arse. Mobile battery went pop.”
“No scorch marks then? Handbag must be very strong to survive a blast that injured so many.”
“Lidl bags are bomb proof wow who knew?”
“That “bomb” doesn’t seem real. Where is the burn damage to the surroundings. How come journalists ‘just happened’ to be there? This doesn’t feel right.”
“Smokescreen.
“I think this bomb was nothing more than a firework that went off a little more vigorously than intended.”
The above are just some of the responses to This Site’s article on the alleged terror attack at Parsons Green tube station.
Fortunately, the police are taking the matter a little more seriously than the clowns mentioned above and have arrested an 18-year-old man in the port area of Dover this morning (September 16).
You can draw your own conclusions about why he was found there.
Here’s part of a statement issued by the Metropolitan Police:
“The 18-year-old man was arrested by Kent Police in the port area of Dover this morning, Saturday, 16 September, under section 41 of the Terrorism Act.
“The man remains in custody at a local police station. He will be transferred to a south London police station in due course.
“Detectives from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command are continuing to urge anyone with information about the terrorist attack to contact police.
“Thirty people are known to have been injured during the attack in which an improvised explosive device was detonated on a tube train at Parsons Green Underground Station at around 08:20hrs on Friday, 15 September.
“So far, detectives have spoken to 45 witnesses and continue to receive information from the public to the confidential anti-terrorist hotline.
“The public has sent 77 images and videos to investigators via the UK Police Image Appeal website. Anyone with footage or images from the incident is urged to upload them at www.ukpoliceimageappeal.co.uk where they will be looked at by investigators.
“Anyone with information is urged to call the Anti-Terrorist Hotline on 0800 789 321 or, in an emergency, always call 999.”
This Writer would urge anybody with information, who has not yet come forward, to do so via the avenues listed in the statement. Clowns need not bother.
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An image from a Twitter user of an alleged device on the train at Parsons Green tube [Image: @RRigs].
The question has to be asked: Would a terrorist have been able to plant an improvised explosive device (IED) on the London Underground if Theresa May had not cut the police’s ability to detect and prevent such attacks?
It seems highly unlikely that 22 people would now be receiving treatment for flash burns after the device partially exploded at Parsons Green station, if the ability of the police to gather intelligence about planned attacks had not been seriously hindered by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
But I wanted to highlight the words of Professor Michael Clarke of the Royal United Services Institute – an expert on the subject. Speaking in June, after the London Bridge terror attack, he warned that police were less able to detect terrorism than they had been in the past:
Expert Michael Clarke says terror attacks could have been prevented – intelligence services missed 'flashing lights' pic.twitter.com/8cH2X9PZiC
— Grassroots Voices (@GrassrootsJC4PM) June 5, 2017
It seems clear that nothing has been done to address these failings.
This is proof that Theresa May is a threat to our national security. But she is still sitting in Downing Street, pretending to be a prime minister. WHY?
An explosion that injured a number of people at Parsons Green underground station in west London was a terrorist incident, the Met police have said.
Commuters on a tube train reported hearing a bang and seeing a fireball flying down the carriage during Friday morning rush-hour. Pictures and video, purporting to be from the train carriage, were posted of flames coming out of a carrier bag containing a white bucket.
Police later confirmed the blast came from an improvised explosive device.
NHS England said 22 people were receiving treatment at three hospitals as well as an urgent care centre in Parsons Green.
None was thought to be in a serious or life-threatening condition.
The incident is the fourth terrorist attack in the UK this year, following incidents at Westminster, London Bridge, Manchester and Finsbury Park in north London. The UK terrorism threat level remains at severe, meaning an attack is highly likely.
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Shiny and insincere: Maybe. But Bob Monkhouse spoke from the heart about the loss of his son, something that seems beyond David Cameron’s abilities.
Do you ever have moments when you think you’ve said something the best way you can, and then someone else comes along and does it better? In this case, the words come from an unexpected source – and from beyond the grave.
Last week this blog ran a couple of articles attacking the way David Cameron, in his speech to the Conservative Party conference, used the memory of his late son Ivan to attack the Labour Party’s stance on the National Health Service.
Some readers took exception, and it is to these that the following is addressed.
In a Mail on Sunday interview back in January, Cameron himself expressed his displeasure with people who said he would eventually find a way to take something positive from his loss: “Even though Ivan was very disabled and very ill, it was all just a total shock. We had no idea he was going to suddenly die in the way he did,’ he said.
“But the person who says to you, ‘There’s a silver lining to all this,’ or ‘Some good will come of all this,’ you actually want to thump. It’s the most annoying thing anybody can possibly say.”
It seems Cameron did find a way to make something of his son’s death, though – by attacking Labour. Here’s the Daily Telegraph‘s coverage of this part of his speech last week: “In the most emotional passage of his keynote address, Mr Cameron expressed outrage that Labour was trying to position itself as the party of the NHS and undermine the Conservatives’ record.
“‘They were spreading complete and utter lies – and I just think, how dare you! It was the Labour party that gave us the scandal of Mid-Staffs, elderly people begging for water.’*
“He added: ‘For me this is personal. I know what it’s like to have a sick child in hospital and know that when I get there are people who will care for it like it was their own child.
“’How dare they suggest I would ever put that risk for other people’s children? How dare they frighten those who rely on our National Health Service.'”
In both the remarks quoted above, Mr Cameron’s son hardly gets a mention. He’s there as a device for Cameron to talk about himself or Labour.
This is something that was brought home to Yr Obdt Srvt in the most unexpected place over the weekend, when BBC Four ran a documentary about, of all people, the late Bob Monkhouse.
During his life, Bob gained a reputation for being shiny and insincere – all gloss and no substance. It’s a reputation that may be partly deserved. He also shared two important characteristics with Cameron – he was a Conservative (or at least a Conservative supporter, back in the 1980s), and he had a son with Cerebral Palsy who died young (although considerably older than Cameron’s son).
And there was nothing insincere about Bob when he said this about his son Gary: “I think most parents of a grossly handicapped child will see [it] not as their tragedy, but as their child’s tragedy. And then, as in the case of my son, you begin to learn from the child.
“He was such a – a straight arrow. He was a source of great inspiration to me and, and I think of him every day, and if I grieve – as I do – I grieve not for his death but for his life, which was a very difficult fight for him.”
The difference between Bob’s words and Cameron’s should be clear. If so, then there is nothing to add.
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