UKC

Understanding that France have played quite a lead role in some of the actions in the "war against terror", but it puzzles me why the vast majority of European attacks are on French soil. (I suppose the only exception being Turkey) I'm amazed we haven't seen similar situations particularly in the UK, but what about the other major EU countries?

In reply to JamButty:

It's a soft target.

Many incidents are intercepted or prevented in the UK.

Boarders in France open and easy to cross.

Dispite Being on highest alert French security agencies fail to maintain standards.

In reply to Aztec Bar:
I think it's more than borders. These are almost all home grown terrorists.

France has similar issues to the U.S. race issues. A largely poor disenfranchised Muslim population in France's case. Add on that historical treatments and you've got the perfect breeding ground for ISIS et al to radicalise. I'm surprised they haven't been more successful in the US tbh.

The scary thing about truck attacks is they'd have little clues, in the UK we can monitor bomb making and planning well, but just grab a truck and drive through a crowd is very hard to stop and detect in the first place.

In reply to JamButty:

A guy on Daily Politics explains why.
(BBC 2 12:00. Maybe it's on iplayer?)

In reply to Lusk:



Can you remember what he said?

This type of attack can be prevented by 'Blockers' concrete blocks or vehicles at all accesses to the event. They are used as a matter of course at many large events in the UK when the threat level warrants it.

In reply to Roadrunner5:

I tend to agree there are many groups of immigrants into France from former colonies, there has been little integration of these people and they often live in ghettos of similar people, Moroccans and Algerians. Housed in the poorer areas with little hope of jobs and not a very bright out look.

Thankfully we don't tend to have the ghetto mentality in the UK and although we don't fully engage, I believe we're better at integration than France. I don't doubt the same could happen here though, after all it only takes one nutter and a truck, which is why it's so frightening.

In reply to climbwhenready:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07l0tby/daily-politics-15072016
@ 40 mins. Better than me trying to summarise!

In reply to Aztec Bar:

But you could be driving a truck down Oxford Street now and kill more people than were killed in France.

In reply to Aztec Bar:


Maybe there, but there are plenty of situations when they'd be able to hit crowds. Busy London streets, football matches Etc. obviously pedestrian streets can be protected.

It'd be nice if people could explain why it's just about borders then..

Plenty of other countries have the same border controls, close to the ME and have little to no attacks..

In reply to Lusk:



Just that I'm at work and can get away with checking UKC

In reply to krikoman:


This is the problem of the political neophyte - a goldfish memory that only lasts for the latest issue, no depth of knowledge or experience.

Of course, in fact, the Northern Race Riots of 2001 were characterised by segregation and ghettoisation. (Hence the notion of Parallel Lives, central to our understanding of what happened).

It gave birth to the whole concept of s-called Community Cohesion, although it's notable that one of the creators of that, Ted Cantle, has now moved away from multi-kulti melting pots to intercultural assertiveness.

In reply to winhill:

I don't think we do, we have limited areas?notably in Yorkshire and lancashire.

But compared to France or the US I don't think it's as bad. The stats on prison populations in France and the US show a disproportionately high proportion of Muslim or black inmates respectively.

But we still have issues, look at 7/7. We are all caught up on Muslim immigration but most of these attacks are home grown disenfranchised young males.

In reply to Lusk:



It's Maajid Nawaz, sensible enough but he says nothing that other people aren't already saying and he's actually very weak on Why France.

Can't help feeling that you're just wasting people's time here, videos are a time consuming way of making a point and here there's just no real point to watching it.

In reply to JamButty:

France used to have a major, major disconnect between their intelligence services and their police.