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Look, a man taking pictures of Big Ben- call the terrorist hotline!
BillieTheBot
Posts: 8,721 Bot
I'm sure many of you will have heard the current government ad campaign playing on the radio about preventing terrorist attacks. For those who haven't, it goes like this:
Every time I hear the ad I have to change stations for my blood pressure's sake if nothing else. Who do these fucking cunts take us for???
I'd sooner live in a country where from time to time we get a terrorist attack than one where people are invited to phone in and report individuals as possible terrorists for ''hanging around'' or using a camcorder in Central London. It seems the only thing George Orwell got wrong in 1984 is the year....
Of course there have been ocassions in the past when somebody was planning mischief. And citizens have usually been perfectly capable of reporting genuinely suspicious activity without the government patronising us and and blatantly trying to scare us into submission. SO FUCK OFF YOU CUNTS!
Am I the only one who is incensed by this fucking bullshit? :mad:
How do you tell the difference between someone just video-ing a crowded place and someone who's checking it out for a terrorist attack?
How can you tell if someone's buying unusual quantities of stuff for a good reason or if they're planning to make a bomb?
What's the difference between someone just hanging around and someone behaving suspiciously?
How can you tell if someone is a normal everyday person, or a terrorist?
The answer is, you don't have to. If you call the confidential Anti-Terrorist Hotline on 0800 789 321, the specialist officers you speak to will analyse the information. They'll decide if and how to follow it up. You don't have to be sure. If you suspect it, report it. Call the Anti-Terrorist Hotline on 0800 789 321 in confidence.
Every time I hear the ad I have to change stations for my blood pressure's sake if nothing else. Who do these fucking cunts take us for???
I'd sooner live in a country where from time to time we get a terrorist attack than one where people are invited to phone in and report individuals as possible terrorists for ''hanging around'' or using a camcorder in Central London. It seems the only thing George Orwell got wrong in 1984 is the year....
Of course there have been ocassions in the past when somebody was planning mischief. And citizens have usually been perfectly capable of reporting genuinely suspicious activity without the government patronising us and and blatantly trying to scare us into submission. SO FUCK OFF YOU CUNTS!
Am I the only one who is incensed by this fucking bullshit? :mad:
Beep boop. I'm a bot.
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Comments
I think thats one of the more depressing posts on here for a long while.
Is that ad really serious??
Or maybe I should rather be like this:
I might make some calls. "Hey yeah, there is this guy. I've seen him in town a few times going through bins, I think he might be planting a bomb or looking for places to do so. Whats that? He's probably just homeless? Nah, he's got a beard like Bin Laden mate. Better send in the armed police and check it out."
Most sane people wouldn't.
Such campaigns are not only completely useless in counter-terrorism operations (as budda pointed out earlier they are actually likely to cause a lot more harm than good) but yet another exercise in scaremongering by the government.
They should go fuck themselves. People are perfectly capable of reporting genuine suspicious activity if they see it.
Yea, I agree that the videoing, as an example of suspicious behaviour, is a bad one. They should have just said: 'if you think that someone is behaving suspiciously and may be a terrorist, call this number'. But that's clearly what they mean, and that's what sensible people will do, they just picked bad examples. They're telling people the specific number they should call in such a situation.
No it isn't completely useless, and I can't see what makes you think it's scaremongering. Most calls probably won't be of terrorist activity, but some may be.
I can't see why you're incensed.
But above all it is for the above mentioned scaremongering reason. We were at FAR GREATER risk by a far longer amount of time of suffering terrorist attacks by the IRA, yet we didn't have to put up with the levels of bullshit and scaremongering we're being subjected to, purely for political reasons. I'll take my fucking chances with Mohamed Al-Kaboom, thank you very much.
One example of this can be seen in the way that people react to men (yes, specifically men) with cameras. Much of the time they will be assumed to be up to no good. If it's not terrorism, then they are peados out to get pervy photos of kids. The simple fact is that practically ever single one of them will be a person trying to enjoy their hobby, but the media has wound everyone up into a state of perpetual fear.
Yep and several times I was stopped by the police because I was because I was loitering near barracks with an Irish accent. (Or once in a pub because I and a couple of other subalterns were making violent comments about killing paras - we were about to play them at rugby
White English people might not have done, but Irish living in London had a seriously nasty time.
Unfortunately this is the realities of the 'War on Terror'. Apparently in one rural Police authority has asked people to keep a look out for people who look like Muslims in case they are on training trips. Glad I'm not in the Scouts anymore as most of my group were from ethnic minorities and we had camps every summer.
Also anybody who thinks there is a Muslim 'look' should go to the Balkans. You can't tell a Muslim from a Serb.
Having said that, I first heard this advert when I was driving home from work one day. I switched on the radio, in the middle of the commercial break, and this came on. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
'Officer there's groups of foreigners outside Buckingham Palace with cameras taking pictures of the soldiers' :chin:
What makes it unnecessary? I'm sure there are lots of people who don't know that that's the specific number that you should call if you have suspicions about terrorist activity. If you ask people to report their suspicions, you're always going to get lots of cases that are completely benign, and some that may be genuine.
How do you know that that is the government's policy? How do you know that the 'tanks deployed at Heathrow' and the 'ludicrous liquids ban' were just scaremongering and weren't based on a credible threat? What are the political reasons for it? Why isn't the scaremongering working? You and most people who have replied to this thread don't seem to be in a 'state of semi-fear and anxiety', I think that's probably the norm.
Members of certain communities are already subject to greater scrutiny. Sucks, but unfortunately people from that community have blown people up, and others are trying to do the same, so they'll just have to get used to it. A feeling of alienation is already there and would be with or without this ad. It will be there for sometime to come.
Maybe some of the doubters will take a bit more notice cos of this one single post. Thanks for the eye opener.
If the level of intelect generally displayed here were the norm, then "Bright House" with their 29.9% APR wouldn't last a week, yet they're an apparently thriving highstreet business.
I think that the concerns here are anything but the norm.
You can't figure out the political advantages of political fear? Your not very in touch are you ...
Better though, to ask a few people and delay them for a couple of minutes, than ignore them and risk what might happen.
But, I agree, stopping people from taking photos of Buckingham palace e.t.c. is madness.
Be that as it may, I don't think that most normal people are in a state of 'semi-fear and anxiety', or will be put into that state by this ad.
Must've missed that, where was it shown?
Afraid not. As far as I can tell, the whole liquid bomb thing just annoyed a lot of people. Does the government want people to be annoyed at them?
And if anyone was concerned their suspicions might not merit a call to the emergency number, the local police station is only a phone call away, obtainable via the operator, yellow pages, online, etc...
Believe me, if anyone feels they should report something or someone they deem as suspicious, they don't need a massive advertising campaign giving them a a specific number to make contact with the authorities.
Call it a hunch.
The deployment of tanks was a ludicrous measure which only real pupose must have been propaganda. Even if there was intelligence to suggest some evil towelheads were lurking around Heathrow with an RPG, a tank is completely useless a weapon against them. That's what policemen, and police cars and motorbikes are for. They might as well use a Trident 2 nuclear missile to break down the front door of a crack dealer on a council estate. It was a monumentally idiotic move that prompted plenty of raised eyebrows amongst experts, observers, the press and just about everyone- and justly so.
As for the liquids, I might have to dig up my Private Eyes but since the initial event, expert after expert has said there isn't a chance in hell of anyone making a bomb in that way and with what they could bring into an airplane cabin in their hand luggage. Not that it has stopped them from imposing a pointless ban on liquids for nigh on 2 years, and counting.
It's all bollocks.
Not for the lack of the government trying though, is it? Because of shit like this is precisely why some people are saying 'maybe we should have ID cards'. Fear of terrorism is the main weapon the government has for introducing ever more draconian and Big Brother measures.
Not need to make it worse though is it? Any prejudice towards groups or ethnicities both completely unjustified and idiotic. You might as well say "men are responsible for most rapes, therefore all men should be viewed suspiciously and reported to police. Tough luck to those who are not rapists, please bear with us".
Anyone who knows anything about politics knows that people tend to rally around the government in power at times of danger. The lack of competence of this government in creating the illusion of danger says nothing about the basic premise. Fear is used to get people to vote for you, be it fear of terrorists, fear of criminals, fear of being a bad parents, or whatever else. All of these a legitimate fears, but that doesn't stop the government hugely exaggerating the risks to buy votes, in the same way that a company selling bottled water will exaggerate the tiny risk of tap water being unsafe to sell their product.