Posted on 05/24/2017 4:09:13 AM PDT by naturalman1975
A man with a knife has been arrested near Buckingham Palace, as Britain remains on critical terror alert amid fears Manchester suicide bomber Salman Abedi did not act alone.
The man was detained by police on The Mall just moments before the Queen passed by in a car on her way to an engagement with the Duke of Edinburgh at St Paul's Cathedral.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
When will we wake up?
I am pretty cynical of the powers that be, so I figure they will release the dude quickly, whether he is up to no good, or not.
Yes, I saw that. If it was a pocket knife, I wouldn’t think much of it. Yeah, it’s a weapon under UK law but I always carry one when I’m there and rely on the police exercising a degree of common sense about an old sailor carrying a knife.
What this guy was carrying... I can’t really see him planning to attack the Queen in a car, but attacking somebody else while she was nearby... that could be a statement.
Or he could be innocent of anything real. But security is going to be tight right now - as it should be.
Unless the suspect was dumb enough to be carrying that thing out in the open, how did LE know the perp had it on him? Or did they bag the perp for something else and find the knife on him?
Or it could’ve been a test run to see what LE could detect.
Or the perp could just be a flaming idiot.
Be interesting to know the perp’s citizenship status, ethnicity, and religion. None of which were mentioned.
And instead of doing away with the changing of the guard, why not arm them instead? With weaponry loaded with live ammo. Or don’t they trust their own people?
At the moment, the guard will be armed and will have live ammunition (that isn’t routine, but it is pretty well known to be part of heightened alerts). Cancelling some of the ceremonial aspect allows them to be focused on their guard duty.
That certainly could be part of the reason too. But if it is, it’s even more reason to cut down on the ceremonial at the moment and focus on what is important.
So the British gov’t, for whatever reason or reasons, can’t multitask, protect tradition and provide security at the same time.
Sad.
The Changing of the Guard is a ceremony that takes about 45 minutes. It gets cancelled if there is a heavy rain storm, largely because there won’t be any tourists to watch it.
Cancelling it isn’t a big deal. It happens quite regularly.
Doing so for actual security reasons to ensure the guards are more effective at protecting the Queen and the Palace is a no brainer.
I don’t think it’s sad. It’s professional. The ceremonial is less important than the practical.
During the Second World War, the guard stood their posts in battledress, rather than the traditional clothes. Personally, I’m not sure it’s not time for that now as the UK has gone to its highest alert.
Well, so much for carrying on.
Notice the smirk on his face?
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