Best Of

9

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Now down to one attacker on the train, looking more and more like a mental health issue. Tragic that it leads to this much suffering.

That makes a lot more sense. Presumably the other guy clobbered him? But obviously not too much or the perpetrator would have received treatment. Nice of plod to give him a night in the cells if so!

That’s bizarre to hold him for 24 hours when there’s cctv in every carriage and rather a lot of witnesses.

Possibly racially profiled and carrying a knife? But not connected? Or perhaps he looks similar to the guy and was similarly dressed? I'd be a bit pissed off if it was me held for 24 hours after an event were I was totally innocent.

I suspect that Officer Savage might have been involved...

I suspect it was dark on the station and people were confused. The unreliability of eye-witness testimony is well known (and yet our justice system continues to rely on it).

I once saw an unfortunate event, a man jumping in front of a train. 15 minutes later, or so, I was giving my statement to the police of what I'd seen. I then overheard another witness give his statement of what he'd seen. These two statements were significantly inconsistent with each other. We were both close. This was all in daylight. I knew eyewitness evidence was poor, but that drove it home.

...the relatively civilized Matt Goodwin...

That must be one fuck of a relative...

Noted. Goodwin usually makes arguments in a broadly rational manner, using facts, accumulating data, drawing conclusions from grounds and suggesting conclusions which are more or less consistent with a society which has regard for the rule of law.

(I more or less never agree with him, his forms of fact selection (which are distortion but common in mainstream politics), or his conclusions. Like other polemicists from the PM down he leaves out facts which are unsuited to him and it isn't all that hard to see thriough him. But that's true of wet centrist liberals too, of which I suppose I am one.)

He is surrounded by people who don't do anything of the sort. People who make up facts, threaten others and act as if they have no regard for the rule of law.

For all his faults, Goodwin is useful for the moment as a measure of how a political debate is developing, and how argument can alter the Overton window.

However his use of quote marks around the word "British" referring to a man born here who has now been released as innocent and uninvolved which I quote further up is just horrible.

This is the Goodwin quote again ICYMI:

10 people suffering a mass stabbing on a train at the hands of two Black "British" men for no apparent reason.


https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1985011132654829815

It seems that both LNER staff and train passengers behaved heroically. The best of British.

We should absolutely encourage have a go heroes. They're a disincentive to committing crime. Trapped into some lonely old farmhouse on the promise of mattresses full of cash and the old git polishes you off with a blunderbuss? Tough tits.

So what would you do if you happened upon some violent scene?

That would depend what I felt I could do given the situation. If running away in terror was the most sensible thing to do, I would absolutely do that. The train was an incredibly difficult situation. I am sure I would have retreated, but would have hoped to be one of the ones looking around for some weapons to defend those behind them when the assailant came.

And afterwards - how would you be judged?

‘‘Tis better to be judged by twelve, than carried by six.

How many people on the British mainland did the URA (sic) kill.

I'm a bit averse to answer this question, as it implies that casualties in NI don't count. But the function of a statistician is to answer questions, so as follows.

The best archive of casualties during the Troubles is the CAIN archive in the University of Ulster. It contains databases of deaths. One of those databases is Malcolm Sutton's Index of Deaths. It contains statistical tables thus:

• basic tabulations (tables) of each variable, including geographies
  
• crosstabulations (two-way tables) of key variables
  
• selection of a subset of the information and crosstabulation of two variables
  

One of those basic tabulations is by location. It tells me that

Location Count
Belfast East 128
Belfast North 577
Belfast South 213
Belfast West 623
Britain 125
County Antrim 209
County Armagh 477
County Derry 123
County Down 243
County Fermanagh 112
County Tyrone 341
Derry 227
Europe 18
Republic of Ireland 116
TOTAL 3532

So of of the 3532 deaths attributed by Sutton to the Troubles, 125 were on the island of Great Britain

I see it COP30 this week in Brazil. There’s been little fanfare about it in the lead up to it. A few years ago it would have had significant coverage.

Main countries aren’t bothering. Hard to see what it can achieve aside from the regular demand for ‘climate reparations’.

And, yet, the problem is more serious than ever.

It just goes to show how fickle and shallow much opinion is on this.

Just look at Greta. Completely forgotten about climate change and wrapped herself in a Palestinian flag.

Don’t make stuff up. I just looked at her Instagram. The majority of recent posts are about Sudan, while there are others about Palestine and about climate change.

Sudan? So she's found a new bandwagon to jump on.

'Why don't those wankers talk about Sudan?'

'Talks about Sudan'

'Those wankers are just jumping on a new bandwagon!!'

Sounds like a big well done to the driver and railway workers for their quick thinking to get the train stopped.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/02/train-driver-quick-thinking-saved-lives-stabbing/

The Class 800 Azuma LNER service had departed Peterborough when the attack began and was scheduled to travel through Huntingdon at 125mph on a fast track that does not have access to a platform.

Within minutes, LNER staff had declared an emergency, alerting passengers to the jeopardy through the train’s tannoy system.

The driver, crew and signallers diverted the train from its inner rail track to Huntingdon station’s platform-side rail so that emergency services could rapidly board.

It stopped in Huntingdon just 14 minutes after departing Peterborough, where armed police officers, paramedics and an air ambulance were ready to respond.

Another thought: while the very depressing debate in these circumstances tends to focus on immigration, perhaps what I feel most strongly is that there is a growing sense of unease around public safety. Let’s leave aside ideology and nationality for a second. Do people feel more secure going about their daily business in this country than they did say 25-30 years ago? We have always had isolated incidents and attacks on the general public, but something does feel different at the moment.

There are myriad reasons and causes, as is usual. But I do think that we need to look at policing, law and order and matters of security much more closely to try and address this. That is, of course, not something that changes overnight.

Wronguns need to be excluded from society. And it starts with small crime, these mugs clearing the shelves at Greggs are adding to a downward spiral of lawlessness.