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Originally posted by peacekeeper:
Turns out that James Cregan called them up, and as soon as they knocked on his door, he mowed them down with a hail of bullets and a home made grenade.
This has of course raised the issue of arming our police force, but the general view seems to be as always. We don't want to be America, and we want our police service to act with public consent and not armed coercion.

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Ummm, if they were armed, how would that have helped them? I don't get the connection. Sad for the two officers though.

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Originally posted by PEACEKEEPER:
Chrisisall----I think the issue is with the armed police point is, maybe if they had been armed they could have returned fire.But, I agree, what chance did they have.Anyway, I think it is widely accepted that the gun control argument is something that is never going to be given any real consideration in this country.Our culture is just too ingrained against the use of guns.

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Gawd, PK AND Magons, hearing that your countries are going the way of ours (tho' we are unquestionably way ahead of you at this point) really saddens me. Is it that way in the rest of the world, too? Depressing.

I agree with the gun thing. They wouldn't have had a chance whether they were armed or not, and resisting arming the whole populace is, in my opinion, a good thing. There will be instances like these and, horrible as they are, I think there will always be fewer of them than here. There will ALWAYS be fewer people offing one another out of momentary rage, I believe, too. You guys have the right mentality, and as long as the police aren't armed, a country whose mentality is to respect the police (at least MORE than here) is worth keeping...for as long as you can anyway.

While I also know that abductions, sexual violence and murders happen everywhere, it also saddens me to hear of them happening over there. Over here we're used to it--as much as anyone can be--and accept it as a fact of life. I know such things happen all over the world, but I hate being reminded of it.

On a totally unrelated subject, what do you guys think of Dr. Who moving to America? Dunno if it's a real "move", have heard about it and seen the recent episodes, but personally I worry about DW becoming more "Americanized", if you will. Some things are best left alone, and we've "stolen" so many of your icons, who have moved to LaLaLand, that I'm wary as hell.

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Originally posted by PEACEKEEPER:
I think the issue is with the armed police point is, maybe if they had been armed they could have returned fire.But, I agree, what chance did they have.Anyway, I think it is widely accepted that the gun control argument is something that is never going to be given any real consideration in this country.Our culture is just too ingrained against the use of guns.

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Originally posted by Geezer:

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Originally posted by PEACEKEEPER:
Chrisisall----I think the issue is with the armed police point is, maybe if they had been armed they could have returned fire.But, I agree, what chance did they have.Anyway, I think it is widely accepted that the gun control argument is something that is never going to be given any real consideration in this country.Our culture is just too ingrained against the use of guns.

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Except that the two officers were killed with a gun.

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Also wonder if the "Wot's all this, then." philosophy - that folks will defer to police in most all instances - made the officers a bit less careful and aware.

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I think Y'all have gone just slightly overboard in regards to criminalizing self-defense

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A Lancashire man who posted offensive comments on Facebook about missing five-year-old April Jones has been jailed for 12 weeks.

Matthew Woods, 20, made a number of derogatory posts about April and missing Madeline McCann.

He appeared at Chorley Magistrates' Court where he admitted sending a grossly offensive public electronic communication.

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Who decides what is grossly offensive?

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Originally posted by kpo:
No, you're not missing anything Rouka, that's how it is - the right to free speech (of the nasty variety)is not as respected here as in America. I personally find this kind of example quite worrying; I don't think the slope is as slippery as some here would probably argue, but I thought our principles of free-speech were stronger than this. In any case I think a twelve week jail term is ridiculous. I would limit the punishment for this kind of offense to a fine, probably just for the most extreme cases.

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Who decides what is grossly offensive?

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There's probably a complex legal definition.

It's not personal. It's just war.

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127 Improper use of public electronic communications network

(1)A person is guilty of an offence if he—
(a)sends by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character; or
(b)causes any such message or matter to be so sent.
(2)A person is guilty of an offence if, for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another, he—
(a)sends by means of a public electronic communications network, a message that he knows to be false,
(b)causes such a message to be sent; or
(c)persistently makes use of a public electronic communications network.
(3)A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable, on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, or to both.
(4)Subsections (1) and (2) do not apply to anything done in the course of providing a programme service (within the meaning of the Broadcasting Act 1990 (c. 42)).

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Justin Bieber in Downton Abbey?

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Originally posted by peacekeeper:
With reference to the Jimmy Saville debate, the FAMILY have now removed his headstone from his grave to "Respect Public Opinion" and his charitable trust, which has made millions of pounds for disabled charities over 40years of work, are now changing their name to reflect public opinion. I find this SO troubling that a man's name can be maligned so tragically on hearsay. This is not justice under any circumstance. If these allegations were true, and I'm not saying they aren't, surely they cant be allowed after a man has died and been buried for so long.
I find it all very disturbing.

With the grace of age, commander, we learn to accept.

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Originally posted by Niki2:

Magons, I know there's violence the world over, it's contemplating that while

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Abduction type murders are still rare enough to attract a lot of media attention

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NOW, I'm guessing you're on the way to being like us, where they're common enough that they only get local attention, if that. Saddens me immeasurably.

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Originally posted by Niki2:
What is this "public order offence"?

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Originally posted by peacekeeper:
It seems that the Jimmy saville accusations are increasingly becoming justified, according to an expose programme this evening. Cover ups going back 40 years. I'm embarrassed I defended him in the first place.
But the question still remains, "What is the point of investigating after the death???" If you can't come forward when alive and prosecutable,you will get no closure????"

With the grace of age, commander, we learn to accept.

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HE WAS the biggest television star in Britain, courted by prime ministers, princes and the Pope. And now the millions of people who had watched, laughed at and grew up with the late Jimmy Savile, OBE, KCSG, are trying to come to terms with the fact that he had been sexually abusing under-age girls for 50 years. It was shocking, people agreed, and yet somehow not surprising: when you watch old TV clips of him fondling star-struck children, it all seems so obvious - and shameful: why hadn't they realised?

More to the point, why did the BBC fail to investigate the rumours that we now know were rife in the '60s and '70s: that their golden goose, kingpin of top-rating shows Top of the Pops and Jim'll Fix it, was entertaining young girls from studio audiences in his dressing room and at post-show parties, delivered to him by program assistants. Or that when he was out on the road running for charity he took young fans to bed in his campervan.

And after Savile's death last year, why was an investigation into his predatory activities by the BBC's flagship current affairs show, Newsnight, suddenly dropped - to be followed a month later by two fulsome tribute programs?

And why did the BBC file away incendiary evidence gathered by Newsnight producer Meirion Jones and reporter Liz MacKearn, only to see the same material used by its arch competitor, ITV, in a report screened a year later, which delivered compelling testimonies from more of Savile's alleged victims.
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These questions preoccupied Britain last week in the wake of a BBC Panorama report - ''What the BBC Knew'' - watched on Monday night by 5 million people. Amid a cascade of theories about conspiracy and cover-up, the BBC's director general, George Entwhistle, and BBC Trust chairman Lord Chris Patten were summoned for questioning by the British government's culture, media and sport committee.

Why did Entwhistle, director of vision for BBC One at the time of the Newsnight investigation, not ask what was in it? He did not want to show ''undue interest''.

Why was a blog by Newsnight editor Peter Rippon, explaining his reasons for abandoning the investigation, endorsed by the BBC and then three weeks later criticised for ''inaccuracies''. Entwhistle was ''disappointed'' by the inaccuracies, he told the committee, and had asked Rippon to ''step aside'' pending an inquiry.

It is a process all too reminiscent of the same committee's hearings earlier this year into phone hacking at News International. And as with the News scandal, the stain is spreading through the ranks of executives who ''weren't aware'', reaching across the Atlantic to former director general Mark Thompson in New York, about to take up a post as CEO of The New York Times - an appointment that now looks in jeopardy.

David Attenborough and acclaimed foreign correspondent John Simpson, both leviathans of broadcasting, have pronounced it the worst crisis to hit the BBC for 50 years.

But Steve Hewlett, a former Newsnight editor, now a columnist and presenter of The Media Show on BBC Radio, disagrees: ''If it could be proved that BBC management quashed the Newsnight program for corporate reasons, that would be very serious,'' he says, ''but there is no evidence they did. Their crime has been not a cover-up but the spectacularly incompetent way they have handled the fallout.''

Hewlett thinks the program was probably pulled for genuine editorial reasons: ''Hindsight is a dangerous thing: we know now that there are probably hundreds of women out there who were abused by Savile, but did it look like that to Peter Rippon a year ago? His team had just one woman on camera and other witnesses they'd never actually met. If you were an editor you might say, 'That's not quite enough'.''

The real question for Rippon and the BBC, says Hewlett, is why, having pulled the program, they just sat on it. ''That is the truly extraordinary thing.''

But while British journalists have been obsessed with the Newsnight affair, the public is more interested and appalled by the revelations contained in the two television exposes. The allegations are bad enough: that Savile not only cherry-picked young fans for sexual favours, but targeted the most vulnerable - in hospitals, at Broadmoor secure psychiatric institution and at Duncroft, an approved school for emotionally disturbed girls.

As a celebrity volunteer and fund-raiser he was often given his own flat or dressing room where he took his victims. ''The younger the better,'' was Savile's motto, according to his biographer Dan Davies. But Savile was not particularly secretive about his activities - staff at those institutions now seem, at some level anyway, to have known what he was up to. So why did nobody do anything?

One by one, Savile's former BBC colleagues and producers were hauled out of retirement as Panorama presenter Shelley Joffre asked that question.

As a young reporter, Martin Young joined Savile on a charity run and found him lying on the bed in his campervan with a teenage girl. ''I thought he was a pervert,'' Young told Joffre. Did he think about reporting it? ''No, it never crossed my mind, and I take my share of blame for that.''

Reporter Bob Langley saw girls - ''12, 13, possibly 14, definitely not 15'' - leaving the campervan: ''[Savile] indicated to me in a nudge nudge sort of way he had just had sex with one of them … Should I have reported it? What would have happened? He would have said it was a joke and that would be the end of it.''

On one show Savile brought his friend Gary Glitter - later a convicted paedophile - onto the set where they both sat cuddling young girls: ''I'm giving girls away here,'' chortled Savile, ''we've got them from everywhere, we've even got some from Broadmoor.'' He was routinely filmed in clinches: ''The BBC bought into Savile's sexually suggestive style big time,'' said Joffre.

In 1973 the controller of BBC1 set up a meeting with Savile to question him about rumours that were circulating. Derek Chinnery was then head of Radio One. ''It was naive of us,'' he admitted, ''obviously the man was going to deny it; if the man has denied it, you don't go out and hound him. I know it sounds terrible …''

It does now, of course, but that was a long time ago. Stewart Purvis, former CEO of ITV, worked at the BBC in the '70s: ''We weren't all as concerned about codes and best practice in those days,'' he says, ''In fact, I remember being sexually harassed by the head of BBC News.''

Karin Ward was 14 when Jimmy Savile singled her out at Duncroft, offering her ''cigarettes for sex'' or a trip to a TV centre if she would give him oral sex. She didn't tell anyone because, as Dan Davies told Panorama: ''Who is going to take the word of a girl from an approved school?''

Those girls are adults now and, thanks to investigations - albeit belated - by police and media, they are now telling the secrets that have haunted them for up to 50 years.

Alicia Alinia, a solicitor with Slater & Gordon, said the firm had more than 30 potential clients in the case. ''Today the email box is full again. A lady told me on the phone last night, 'I've buried this for 40 years, now it's clear to me I was not the only one','' she said.

''Money is not the aim. What they want is recognition, truth and accountability.''

Three inquiries have been announced - two by the BBC and one into why an earlier investigation into Savile by Surrey police in 2007 was not followed up by the criminal prosecution service. By Thursday this week a criminal investigation by Scotland Yard and other forces had 300 potential cases on file. ''There is no doubt Savile was one of the worst paedophiles in criminal history,'' said Commander Peter Spindler, head of the investigation. Arrests of other abusers linked to Savile are expected imminently, some of them apparently household names.

What does this mean for the BBC? Commentators agree that the fuss over the canned Newsnight report will blow over but that an investigation into the culture of the light entertainment department will prove ''really damaging''.

Simon Jenkins wrote in The Guardian: ''The corporation's survival depends on its self-abasement. Anything less than total disclosure would be inexcusable.''

It may not be enough. On BBC Radio's Law in Action, retiring appeal court judge Sir Stanley Burnton was asked what the BBC should do - set aside large sums of money, or prepare to defend themselves? ''They should be talking to their solicitors,'' he said.

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