“Our continual meddling, warring ways and lack of planning that has created the whole mess in the first place.”
There are moments in time that are etched in your memory. Halcyon days that fill you with great joy and happiness and that you will never ever forget.
It may be a birth, a wedding or the day your child gurgled its first word. But there is a flip side, too.
For there are days that are filled with events so horrific that they are forever seared into your brain.
Days like the May 22, 2013. On that awful date British Army Fusilier Lee Rigby was hacked to death by two Muslim fanatics on a south London high street.
Like the 9-11 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers or the London bombings of 7/7, the butchering of Lee Rigby stopped the world in its tracks.
Why Woolwich? Why that poor boy? Why weren’t his evil killers stopped before they could carry out their wicked plan? The questions were many and the answers, after a trial and now a Commons Intelligence and Security Commission, too few.
Intelligence, it seems, was thin on the ground. Both MI5 and MI6 seemed to have distinct lack of it. They decided neither of the killers warranted continued surveillance, despite one being arrested in Kenya for trying to join the infamous terror group Al Shabaab, and the other meeting with a senior figure in al Qaeda and who had also been under surveillance by MI5.
What a tragic waste of a young man’s life. Lee’s murder should have been prevented, the killers should have already been banged up, yet the farcical approach of our security services meant that they were free to carry out their heinous act.
Astonishingly the inquiry came to the conclusion that, mistakes apart, there was almost nothing they could have done to have prevented Lee’s murder. That screening of emails and social media would not have prevented his death but that earlier intervention might have.
Confused? I am. Yet they insidiously laid part of the blame on Facebook, which the killers occasionally used. And now Home Secretary Teresa May has demanded Parliament grant yet more powers to those very same services.
A snooper’s charter or a vital and necessary security measure?
Would having the ability to screen everyone’s emails and social media posts help them fight terrorism or just drive the terrorists to alternative and almost impossible to crack browsers?
Why are they wanting more invasive powers when it is really only the normal people that use the known browsers and popular social media sites?
Would more screening stop the current jihad being waged by those who are radicalised?
No. It has been our continual meddling, warring ways and lack of planning that has created the whole mess in the first place.
I fail to see how terrifying everyone by distributing leaflets warning them what to do if they hear a shot or blast is going to stop those intent on committing acts of atrocity. By scaring the bejesus out of the very people the Government are sworn to protect it seems to me that they are doing the Jihadists’ job for them.
Will those extra powers not also further alienate those minorities already feeling ostracised? Talk about putting fires out by pouring petrol on them.
National security is essential. Yes, we are living in very dangerous times but we should be very careful about giving up yet more of our freedoms to those who spin the truth for political gain and those who have made a pig’s ear of looking after them.
No one wants another day of horror ingrained in their memories but is this really the best way to go about preventing it?
I think not.
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