h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Whisky,

No, I'm not crochety, I'm sick.

Sick of everybody and his uncle's parakeet thinking that every opinion they've got on this subject is worth repeating, however unfounded, prejudiced or just plain wrong it might be.

There are far too many things about this we simply *do not know* for it to be anything other than hot air.

As you yourself admit, we don't even know how many people fired 'the too many shots' at this poor sod. All that leaves us with assumptions, presumtions and prejudices.

And we all know about assumptions.

Yep, assumption is the mother of all f**k ups .

The only people who really know what happened are the ones who were there, who I hope are the ones contributing to this enquiry. Well, apart from Mr de Menezes, although I would hope post mortem evidence will also be taken into account during this investigation.

The only ones entitled to judge whether what happened or not was justified, are the ones who were there and the ones who were giving the orders.

But that doesn't stop us all having our own feelings and/or beliefs about what happened, regardless of how reasonable they are.

What is annoying me are the cries for condemnation *before* all the investigations have been completed.

But anyway, I'm an engineer, not a police officer, so I should probably keep my trap shut .

Blues... I'd have thought we were all well aware that there are a great number of things we don't know yet about what happened... But should that make the holding of an opinion (as long as it is based on the principle that our opinions _may_ be based on flawed data) wrong? Are we not allowed to discuss the matter within the confines of the law in the UK?

If we were to limit debate and discussion to those subjects where _all_ the relevant information required was the public domain then most of the discussions in the Forum would be null and void.

Instead of simply telling me 'we don't know what happened so we can't draw conclusions'... why don't you give me some alternative scenarios to those I've outlined - If you can logically pick holes in any of my points I'd be happy to accept it.

certainly the intelligence was flawed at best
if he was really considered a threat then instead of taking a leak the surviellance officer could have easily apprehended the man

>why don't you give me some alternative scenarios to those I've outlined - If you can logically pick holes in any of my points I'd be happy to accept it.<

I can't give 'alternative scenarios' when I don't know the full facts. I could give a half-ars*d, half baked opinion on the basis of the blatently innacurate initial media reports, or on the basis of blatantly carefully selected leaked documents. Neither is partiularly attractive to me.

Six months seems like a reasonable period to have to wait for a full explanation of what happened, bearing in mind how long it can take for a relatively simple murder trial to go from incident to jury verdict.

There is a body of opinion forming that the call for a public enquiry should be resisted as there are already organisations in place to investigate this tragic death.

The 'Shoot to Kill' policy and it's guidelines plus the implementation of that policy leading to the death of Mr Menezes should be investigated by the IPCC, as it is doing.

How Sir Ian Blair and his staff handled the aftermath is the responsibility of the Metropolitan Police Authority and they should face up to their responsibility and not slope shoulders and pass the buck to a public enquiry.

It certainly wouldn't assist the fledgling IPCC's credibility to take their first investigation away from them in favour of a public enquiry.

what about brussels isn't this a job for the international criminal court

No. There are no criminal charges.

How can there be criminal charges when, as yet, no-one has confirmed/denied through an investigation that anyone should be brought to trial?

"Sick of everybody and his uncle's parakeet thinking that every opinion they've got on this subject is worth repeating,"

Which certainly doesn't seem to give you pause in repeating your own

Read carefully. My opinions on here about the opinions held by others. Not what happened.

there certainly was criminal activity involved

.....don't see how you can say there was criminal activity involved when you don't know all facts or even if there will even be any charges......the only sort of criminal activity that is known for certain is that trains/bus were blown up on 7/7...a terrorist act which seems to be being pushed to one side a lot these days.

Really? Where?

One of my concerns, given the lack of actual "facts", is the amount of covering up that seems to be going on. Who said that the man was wearing a heavy coat, and vaulted the barriers? Who said that the tapes were blank? Who said "no money has been paid to the family"? (it was offered).

I think what the public (apart from white van drivers) want to hear is some kind of acknowledgement that, possibly, maybe, there's been a slight cock-up.

When the facts of the case are revealed, we will know the answers to these questions. In the meantime, though, the Met are having a PR disaster. This is an issue that they need to address NOW. Is Jo Moore working for the Met, or something?

RF

.....actually, a lot of these stories which are now claimed as a cover up by police came from public, not police, I recorded some of witness statements given to TV crews on day of shooting.....the ''he came on tube looking like a frightend rabbit, and tripped onto tube are now shown to be wrong''.....the police wrongly repeated some of these stories from public, which was a mistake.
....the police never said they didn't offer family money, they said it was an ex-gratia payment, which it was....also, the family was given a second letter in their own language which seems to have been conveniently forgotten.

Like I said, a PR disaster. Someone must try harder to do their job properly.

RF

.....I think I also, but not certain, have the recording of a member of public giving a detailed account of, on the day of the shooting, of a ruckscak smoking and failed bomb attack on his underground train, this was clearly NOT true and was only shown once or twice then withdrawn.
.....this clearly shows how these things start....it could easily have gone from TV station to TV station wrongly, as the ''frightend rabbit'' coment did, the public don't tell lies, but misinterpret events.
.....take the ''blank tapes'' comment....no one can find out who said that....it could easily have been someone starting a false story to cause trouble.....the inquiry people have said they feel they have all the film that was available.

....I have recorded around 12 DVD discs of generally terrorist atacks/shooting.
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....I have gone through the first hour of a disc on day of shooting, on CNN at 14.40 a reporter gives witness account of shooting. Think this is quite important as to how rumours have started.
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....witness said ''Man who was shot was wearing very large, very bulky coat, unusual for summer months''
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Reporter also mentioned ''Padded coat''and ''warning shout heard''
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At 15.02 on SkyNews
...witness said ''police chased man into station and leapt barrier''
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.....now is it possible that those who thought shot man lept barrier were actually seeing a policeman leap barrier?
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