Britain - The Official Thread

[PeterJB]

If it is a false-flag, I'm curious if it goes all the way to the upper echelons (i.e. Mrs May).

 

[UKMikey]

If it is a false-flag, I'm curious if it goes all the way to the upper echelons (i.e. Mrs May).

If so then this would have to constitute one of the most recklessly irresponsible acts perpetrated by a Conservative prime minister since the last one. Maybe it was Bozza.

 

[Rage Racer]

It kind of lends precedence to the false flag theory, presuming that the Russians would've got it right first time.

I'm glad the Skripals are going to make it. Too bad their pets didn't. They are the real casualties of this attack.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...ea-pigs-die-police-sealed-house-salisbury-spy

The cat and the pigs were important witnesses so the British police got rid of them.

Their bodies were cremated, although they could have contained evidence - if the poisoning occured at Skripals' home (as the "investigation" suggested), they should have contained traces of a poison. But the pets were still alive (Novichok doesn't hurt animals?), and left to suffer of hunger and thirst. Great.

Meanwhile, the UK refused to give a visa to Yulia's cousin who wanted to visit her in a hospital.
Probably being afraid of her exposing this circus completely.

 

[TenEightyOne]

The cat and the pigs were important witnesses so the British police got rid of them.

Their bodies were cremated, although they could have contained evidence - if the poisoning occured at Skripals' home (as the "investigation" suggested), they should have contained traces of a poison. But the pets were still alive (Novichok doesn't hurt animals?), and left to suffer of hunger and thirst. Great.

If Porton Down disposed of them as your link said then it's likely they were tested. Regardless of who placed the nerve agent at what point are the lives of two cavies and a cat at a higher priority than human life?

 

[UKMikey]

Meanwhile, the UK refused to give a visa to Yulia's cousin who wanted to visit her in a hospital.
Probably being afraid of her exposing this circus completely.

Once the Skripals recover they sound like they'd be better placed than anybody to expose this circus. Unless you're suggesting that the British police are going to bump them off as well.

 

[Spurgy 777]

Unless you're suggesting that the British police are going to bump them off as well.

Apparently they already tried and aren't very good at it.

 

[UKMikey]

Apparently they already tried and aren't very good at it.

To be fair, they ARE a bit under-resourced at the moment.

 

[Famine]

How crap is the nerve agent used on the Skripals that they're not only not dead but also recovering?

Unless it's only in films that nerve agents are super deadly 100% of the time.

Yes, nerve agent action in film is... overpowered. Particularly VX - a single vial will kill everyone in San Francisco, but in the real world it took two doses smeared on a hankie to kill a fat Korean man, while leaving the women who did it unharmed. Probably because step 1 of VX treatment is "decontaminate", and they were wearing gloves.


There's a few things I can think of that might have affected just how lethal this particular agent is.

First, dosing. 10mg of VX is enough to kill a person. A-232 Novichok is about as deadly as VX, so you want about 10mg of Novichok (give or take). That's a hard quantity to measure. At present, nobody's sure where it was administered, but it affected both of them so it's likely to be something they both touched rather than something they ate. Whoever put it in place needed to put enough to kill, I assume, Sergei, but Yulia touched it too. If they only put 10mg out, neither got a lethal dose. Even if they put more out, there's a chance that not enough was transferred to skin.

Moreover, it affected several first responders, one more seriously that the others. That suggests it was made into an aerosol (it's unlikely to have affected so many if it came from skin-to-skin contact with the Skripals; perhaps DS Bailey was more affected because he tried resuscitation, but that's not likely to have had a wider effect), and that changes dosing dramatically. The lethal dose of aerosol VX is at least 30mg per cubic metre per minute of exposure. That means that someone who dosed the air the Skripals walked through would have needed considerably more Novichok than a random Malaysian woman smearing it on Sergei's face, and I'm guessing that person would have been fairly obvious. Unless they were walking ahead of the Skripals and just chucking A-232 over their shoulder, and that's not likely to generate the right dose.

Second is purity. Now, I don't know that much about the transport of nerve agents, but I'm guessing they're not wonderful. I'd also suspect they might show up in scans of hand luggage. A lot would need to go right to get it there intact. If anything went wrong in transport we'd have likely heard about a lot of dead people on trains, planes and buses by now. Safest course of action then is to make it on site - and it's a binary agent (made of two bits, neither of which does anything until they're mixed), so that'd be even more sensible.

If there was any miscalculation at all in the local synthesis (and unless it was made in a school laboratory, there's not many places to easily access scales that weigh in milligrams), it might be anywhere from 10 times less lethal to fundamentally useless. That also dramatically affects the dosing: you could need ten times as much or a thousand times as much, or any amount would be pointless.


It must be such a ballache being a covert operative that has to carry out these stupid-ass plans.

 

[Liquid]

Thank you for the elucidation. I suspected as much but wasn't going to pretend that I knew what the real story might be.

 

[Famine]

Thank you for the elucidation. I suspected as much but wasn't going to pretend that I knew what the real story might be.

If you want some further amusement, read up on my paper-thin reference to VX gas in "The Rock"...

Yes, nerve agent action in film is... overpowered. Particularly VX - a single vial will kill everyone in San Francisco

... and the role it played in the "dodgy dossier" that took us into the second Gulf War.

If you don't already know the story, you're in for some jaw-hitting desk fun.

 

[Rage Racer]

If Porton Down disposed of them as your link said then it's likely they were tested.

So, did they find anything?

If Porton Down disposed of them as your link said then it's likely they were tested. Regardless of who placed the nerve agent at what point are the lives of two cavies and a cat at a higher priority than human life?

But the investigators did enter their home, and probably saw the pets. Didn't they think they could help the investigation?

The people on the Russian social networks are joking, like "Comrade Cat was a GRU agent. The Brits tortured him by keeping him thirsty, but he didn't tell them anything, and died like a hero. RIP."

First, dosing. 10mg of VX is enough to kill a person. A-232 Novichok is about as deadly as VX,

I thought they said it's 5-10 times more toxic than VX.

It must be such a ballache being a covert operative that has to carry out these stupid-ass plans.

That's why a good old icepick would do it better.

 

[Dennisch]

I'm beginning to think that this was more of a personal vendetta than a state sponsored hit.

 

[Famine]

I thought they said it's 5-10 times more toxic than VX.

Some types of Novichok are more potent, like A-234, but A-232 is held to be "as toxic" as VX.

That's why a good old icepick would do it better.

Messy and obvious though. Unless you're in London, you can't shoot or stab someone too easily or covertly either. Poisoning is a good bet for being a long, long way from the scene of the crime by the time the crime becomes known. See Alexander Litvinenko (polonium), Viktor Yuschenko (dioxin), Nikolay Khokhlov (thallium), Georgi Markhov (ricin) and Roman Tsepov (???, but radioactive whatever it was).

 

[TenEightyOne]

So, did they find anything? ...but the investigators did enter their home, and probably saw the pets. Didn't they think they could help the investigation?

As I already said we don't know if the pets were tested or not. I continue to think that if Porton Down incinerated them then they would also have taken test samples. I'm not privy to their processes and results but then nor are you.

The very fact that DEFRA are the people making the statement (not the police or the RSPCA) strongly suggests that some animal contamination was suspected and dealt with. Again, we don't know the workings of the investigation - particularly during those early days before the type of poison was known.

 

[x3ra]

It took two doses of VX because it comes like araldite. Not lethal until mixed. So one dose. You carry the hardener I carry the resin, then neither of us get poisoned. We'll never get any real evidence so it's all speculation, even the government won't get everything they need and they certainly won't tell us.

Remember David Kelly.

 

[Dotini]

London mayor has ideas for knife controls.

London's Mayor Declares Intense New 'Knife Control' Policies To Stop Epidemic Of Stabbings
The police will now stop and frisk people believed to be carrying knives.

Bloomberg / Contributor / Getty Images
ByEMILY ZANOTTI
April 8, 2018

An epidemic of stabbings and acid attacks in London has gotten so bad that London mayor Sadiq Khan is announcing broad new "knife control" policies designed to keep these weapons of war out of the hands of Londoners looking to cause others harm.

The "tough, immediate" measures involve an incredible police crackdown, a ban on home deliveries of knives and acid, and expanding law enforcement stop-and-search powers so that police may stop anyone they believe to be a threat, or planning a knife or acid attack.

Khan announced Friday that the city has created a "violent crime taskforce of 120 officers" tasked with rooting out knife-wielding individuals in public spaces, and is pumping nearly $50 million dollars into the Metropolitan Police department, so that they can better arm themselves against knife attacks. He's also empowering the Met Police to introduce "targeted patrols with extra stop and search powers for areas worst-affected," according to a statement.

The mayor took to Twitter to announce his new policies.

Strangely enough, Khan is responsible to decreasing the number of stop-and-searches, having previously declared the tactic racist and potentially Islamophobic. It's also not clear what local Londoners will now use to cut their food.

London has seen a dramatic uptick in murder rates, surpassing even New York City in number of homicides every month since the beginning of 2018. It has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world, and, technically, knives carried "without good reason" are off limits to anyone under the age of 18.

Parliament is also set to take up heavy "knife control" legislation when it resumes this week. The UK government is expected to introduce a ban on online knife sales and home knife deliveries, declare it "illegal to possess zombie knives and knuckledusters in private" -- "zombie knives" are those defined as being manufactured for the purpose of being used as a person-to-person weapon -- and ban sales of caustic materials to anyone under the age of 18, the Independent reports.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/29179/londons-mayor-declares-intense-new-knife-control-emily-zanotti

 

[McLaren]

Some of your officials have lost their goddamn minds....

 

[Dennisch]

Did they frisk a carpenter?

 

[Liquid]

There is a correlation between increase in knife crime and a decrease in the number of stop-and-searches, which I'm sure has only been helped by the savage cuts to policing budgets and number of officers over the last decade or so.

Yes, I am aware that the first graph is for England and Wales, and the second graph is for London only.

 

[BobK]

London mayor has ideas for knife controls.

The police will now stop and frisk people believed to be carrying knives.

Sounds to me like he's opening himself up wide for charges of "profiling" there.

 

[Liquid]

Sounds to me like he's opening himself up wide for charges of "profiling" there.

Surely any stop-and-search law can be interpreted as enabling profiling? You usually only need 'reasonable suspicion'.

 

[PeterJB]

Sounds to me like he's opening himself up wide for charges of "profiling" there.

As a "person of color" he probably can't be accused of profiling...

 

[Johnnypenso]

As a "person of color" he probably can't be accused of profiling...

Sarcasm...I can dig it.

 

[McLaren]

There is a correlation between increase in knife crime and a decrease in the number of stop-and-searches, which I'm sure has only been helped by the savage cuts to policing budgets and number of officers over the last decade or so.

Yes, I am aware that the first graph is for England and Wales, and the second graph is for London only.

Are the budgets cuts so bad, that they need to pump $50 million back into the London police just to combat knife attacks?

 

[DG_Silva]

Are the budgets cuts so bad, that they need to pump $50 million back into the London police just to combat knife attacks?

Middle management salary bonuses won't pay themselves, don't you know?

 

[Liquid]

 

[HenrySwanson]

London mayor has ideas for knife controls.

London's Mayor Declares Intense New 'Knife Control' Policies To Stop Epidemic Of Stabbings
The police will now stop and frisk people believed to be carrying knives.

Bloomberg / Contributor / Getty Images
ByEMILY ZANOTTI
April 8, 2018

An epidemic of stabbings and acid attacks in London has gotten so bad that London mayor Sadiq Khan is announcing broad new "knife control" policies designed to keep these weapons of war out of the hands of Londoners looking to cause others harm.

This can only be good.

His and May's prior opposition to it was not helpful to London at all

 

[HenrySwanson]

A council in London has passed a motion creating a buffer zone around an abortion clinic:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-43718927

Discussion around it here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43669652

 

[Liquid]

A council in London has passed a motion creating a buffer zone around an abortion clinic:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-43718927

Discussion around it here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43669652

Are you joking? I thought this rubbish only went on in the United States.

 

[UKMikey]

Are you joking? I thought this rubbish only went on in the United States.

I guess there's a public order element to the exclusion zone. The pro- and anti-choice protesters warring outside the clinic seem a bit rubbish as well. Some of them even crashed the council meeting according to the article.