It has lead to discussion here about the safety precautions on buses in comparison to airlines. Someone on a news report here commented, bus travelers aren't subject to any security checks, and they can bring any concealed weapon on board with them. Maybe it is unrealistic to expect security checks on buses. I was just wondering what other people think?
Paranoid. ( I mean the people asking about security checks, not this bloke ) In the 7/7 attack one of the men blew himself on a bus (but we don't think he had a knife ). He was only there because he'd failed to get on a tube train, anyway.
By 'bus' you mean [British] 'coach' rather than a London double-decker, obviously, but what's the practical difference in this case? A madman can stab anyone anywhere.In Britain it's against the law to possess almost any knife in a public place.Enforcing the law effectively is not easy.One method adopted is to suddenly install, unannounced,portable metal detectors at railway stations.These are there just for a day and screen everyone leaving the trains.We had one at Cambridge the other day. Don't know how many professors the police pulled.
While I appreciate the humor that appears in much of this site, and I hate to be the one to be a wet blanket (and I admit to often being the one to digress to humor in a a serious thread), I think we need to look at this event as the horror that it is, rather than make jokes. I fully understand the "whistling past the graveyard" attitude, and have done the same myself at times. But a man died here, and in a horrible way, and the witnesses, some of whom were children, are unlikely ever to forget what they saw. The man killed left friends and family wondering "Why?" and there is no answer.
Perhaps it is that we in the US are hardened to senseless killings, and just don't appreciate how another country feels when they have to experience what we have become inured to. The fact that Canada has one-tenth the population of the US may also be part of this; Canadians, I think, feel more kinship with each other than Americans. In any case, I hope that we can look at this death as the horror that it is, and not as a subject for jokes.
Posts: 17506 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
) In the 7/7 attack one of the men blew himself on a bus (but we don't think he had a knife 
). He was only there because he'd failed to get on a tube train, anyway. 
