cartoon1

cartoon1

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Bee sting more dangerous than jihad, says British gvmnt watchdog David Anderson

Well then, I suppose we can all go back to sleep, as there is now nothing to see here.

Uh huh.

From the Telegraph June 28 by Martin Beckford

Bee stings killed as many in UK as terrorists, says watchdog
David Anderson said that no one has even been injured by an Islamist in this country for more than two years, while the number of convictions has dropped to a “handful”.

As a result he suggested that ministers could relax some anti-terror laws without endangering public safety, such as by allowing terror suspects to apply for bail or making it harder to ban certain groups.

Mr Anderson, a barrister who serves as the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, also congratulated the Coalition for scrapping tough stop and search powers and halving the maximum detention time for suspects to 14 days.

But he added that the “almost incessant” creation of new legislation since 9/11 has left counter-terrorism laws “bitty, messy” and hard to understand.

His optimistic view of the domestic security situation contrasts with that described by the head of MI5 earlier this week. Jonathan Evans, the Director General of the Security Service, warned that the Arab Spring has spawned a new generation of British terrorists while cyber attacks are damaging companies in the “real world”.

In his annual report, published on Wednesday, Mr Anderson wrote: “Whatever its cause, the reduction of risk in relation to al-Qaida terrorism in the United Kingdom is real and has been sustained for several years now.”

He said the situation has improved “markedly” since the middle of the last decade, when Britain suffered the atrocity of 7/7 as well as the failed 21/7 attacks and the foiled fertiliser bomb and airline liquid bomb plots.

The watchdog said no one has been injured by a terrorist in this country since May 2010 when the Labour MP Stephen Timms was stabbed in his constituency surgery by Roshonara Choudhry, while there was not a single al-Qaida attack in Europe throughout 2011.

Sleep....sleep....but first, read it all

No comments: