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I'm seeing reports of four dead now. :(

I'm also reading descriptions of the vehicle as a 4x4 which strikes me as odd because when the vehicle in photos is a crossover. 4x4 in America is a pickup truck with a 4' x 4' bed. I guess those aren't as popular in the UK as I never see pictures with them in the background somewhere. I assume 4x4 in the UK is just your term for all wheel drive?

I knew it was only a matter of time before we suffered a hit like this.

Just goes to show how ultimately impotent the terrorists are.

No warning, and despite the death toll, relatively little damage done. Two killed by the car, one officer killed, and the attacker.

Remember, they security forces have to be lucky all the time - the other guys, just once in a blue moon.

I am not scared. I am not worried. I am not impressed.

I'm hearing on the radio that he isn't middle eastern. He's Jamaican descended Brit who converted to Islam. He's been involved with "radical" Islam groups since at least 2006.

Whilst the deaths and injuries are tragic I think we have to take the positive that we have had no major incidents like we have seen in other countries, and hope that this kind of attack, relying on a car and a knife, is a sign that the support networks to plan major attacks has been sufficiently disrupted in the U.K.

 Breotan wrote:
I'm seeing reports of four dead now. :(

I'm also reading descriptions of the vehicle as a 4x4 which strikes me as odd because when the vehicle in photos is a crossover. 4x4 in America is a pickup truck with a 4' x 4' bed. I guess those aren't as popular in the UK as I never see pictures with them in the background somewhere. I assume 4x4 in the UK is just your term for all wheel drive?

A little off topic, but not exactly. 4x4 is generally used for any all wheel drive car designed (or with pretensions of) being an off road vehicle. Normally something with good ground clearance, low range and locking diffs (except land rovers, which are always called land rovers). Sometimes 2WD SUVs are called 4x4 by people who know no better, but an Audi Quattro would never be called a 4x4 (except the Q models). They would be called all wheel drive or four wheel

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Just goes to show how ultimately impotent the terrorists are.

No warning, and despite the death toll, relatively little damage done. Two killed by the car, one officer killed, and the attacker.

Remember, they security forces have to be lucky all the time - the other guys, just once in a blue moon.

I am not scared. I am not worried. I am not impressed.

I agree. These guys are not terrorists. They are idiots. They managed to do nothing more than an accident. More reason to fear crossing the road than fear people like this. The ones I feel sorry for are the Muslims who will now be at risks from racist scum.

The ones I feel sorry for are the people killed and maimed by this scumbag.

Please don't try and find offence by wilfully misrepresenting what i said and taking a single sentence out of context. It's really not needed and inappropriate.

 Ketara wrote:

It's arrogance to assume you can affect the march of events to that degree. You think that not only can you select the 'relevant' warning signs from history, you think that doing so will somehow permit the aversion or mitigation of some great unknowable event in the future? Real life does not work like Noah's Ark.

Sigh..., we've been down this argument before and I'm not sure anyone wants us both to ramble over the same old ground again. Simply you put everything into the bracket that nothing in the past foretells the future from a historical perspective. But from my perspective that is a useless and pointless approach. Scientific method, which is my preferred approach, is to assess the information to hand and make predictions for the future and the potential outcomes as that is more useful. We are nothing more than machines, albeit complex ones following physical and chemical laws. We are hard wired in a certain way and therefore under similar pressures are inclined to act in the same way. The idea that we have free will is a fallacy based on our desire to have meaning to life and that we aren't just the universe going through the natural entropy laws. In some ways both our reactions are different responses to the same global pressures. Once folks get over this then as we are bound by the same physical rules then there is an inevitability that we will repeat the past (both good and ill). Even the terror attacks are predictable to some extent, if not the exact nature of them, as they have happened historically too, it might be slightly different causes but the underlying generics of exploitation and so on are similar - that results in some people 'boiling over'.


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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Just goes to show how ultimately impotent the terrorists are.

No warning, and despite the death toll, relatively little damage done. Two killed by the car, one officer killed, and the attacker.

Remember, they security forces have to be lucky all the time - the other guys, just once in a blue moon.

I am not scared. I am not worried. I am not impressed.

It's a statistical certainty there a big attack will go through at some point hence why we are on such a high alert. It only takes one thing to be missed or the attacker to have a wider imagination. For example how long until someone works out that an attack on a substation near a school and then on the school at rush hour would cause much more damage. The substation attack would knock out mobile phone signals and power giving enough time to cause the atrocity. This attack was ill conceived and poorly executed, at some point terrorists will work out that attacks on high profile areas will have little impact because they are high profile, well protected areas, there are much 'softer' targets. We have been lucky so far...

WoPo report on it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/british-parliament-on-lockdown-after-shooting-incident-outside/2017/03/22/668105b4-0f11-11e7-9b0d-d27c98455440_story.html?utm_term=.289c3cb50621&tid=notifi_push_breaking-news&pushid=58d2be0bb8e8e81d0000007f

 Steve steveson wrote:

I agree. These guys are not terrorists. They are idiots. They managed to do nothing more than an accident. More reason to fear crossing the road than fear people like this. The ones I feel sorry for are the Muslims who will now be at risks from racist scum.

Which is exactly what the terrorists want. Cause more racial abuse and that drives more people to extremism because of that abuse.

 Whirlwind wrote:

 Steve steveson wrote:

I agree. These guys are not terrorists. They are idiots. They managed to do nothing more than an accident. More reason to fear crossing the road than fear people like this. The ones I feel sorry for are the Muslims who will now be at risks from racist scum.

Which is exactly what the terrorists want. Cause more racial abuse and that drives more people to extremism because of that abuse.

Exactly; it's to provoke an overreaction that'll radicalize the victimized Muslims.

It doesn't make the incident any less tragic but it's important to remember what the goal is.

The cop has passed away too, may he rest in peace.


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 Breotan wrote:
I'm seeing reports of four dead now. :(

I'm also reading descriptions of the vehicle as a 4x4 which strikes me as odd because when the vehicle in photos is a crossover. 4x4 in America is a pickup truck with a 4' x 4' bed. I guess those aren't as popular in the UK as I never see pictures with them in the background somewhere. I assume 4x4 in the UK is just your term for all wheel drive?

Over here 4x4 means a car with 4 wheels, 4 of which are powered. Most people use it interchangeably with SUV which may or may not have power to all 4 wheels.

 Whirlwind wrote:

Sigh..., we've been down this argument before and I'm not sure anyone wants us both to ramble over the same old ground again. Simply you put everything into the bracket that nothing in the past foretells the future from a historical perspective. But from my perspective that is a useless and pointless approach.

Whoever said things had to have a 'point'?

Scientific method, which is my preferred approach, is to assess the information to hand and make predictions for the future and the potential outcomes as that is more useful. We are nothing more than machines, albeit complex ones following physical and chemical laws. We are hard wired in a certain way and therefore under similar pressures are inclined to act in the same way.

Then you should understand the basic flaw in trying to assess causation when the evidence is so terribly, terribly incomplete for testing and verification purposes.

To put it in a scientific analogy (your preferred approach), you're attempting to figure out how to build a watch based upon a description of a single watch cog by a bloke who never actually saw it, but compiled his description by sifting through the descriptions of loads of other people about different kinds of machinery. Most of those people never saw a single watch cog either, and those that did didn't call it that and only saw it from far away at a funny angle. If you're really lucky, you might get equally flawed descriptions of one or two more cogs! But that's your lot.

Whatever sort of watch you build out of that will be so irreparably flawed as to bear no actual resemblance to what you were trying to build in the first place. So standing up and talking about how you totally think it must be theoretically possible to build it has nothing to do with the practical reality of the situation. It's why contemporary economic theory is disproved every ten years despite their vastly complicated mathematic modelling. You can never replicate laboratory conditions in real life, where new people, new thoughts, new technology, and new possibilities are constantly generated over and over.

Not unless you reduce and simplify things down to pointless absurdity anyway.

.

 Whirlwind wrote:

 Steve steveson wrote:

I agree. These guys are not terrorists. They are idiots. They managed to do nothing more than an accident. More reason to fear crossing the road than fear people like this. The ones I feel sorry for are the Muslims who will now be at risks from racist scum.

Which is exactly what the terrorists want. Cause more racial abuse and that drives more people to extremism because of that abuse.

Yep. We all need to be ready to stand up and say "they are not us", be that islamists or racists. Those peddlers of hate on both sides do not represent us. We are all just normal people trying to get on with our lives and our nabours, whatever colour race or religion they may be, and today one of those hate peddlers took three of us and injured many more, and tomorrow more hate peddlers will try and destroy more lives, either through actions or words. Different banner, differ words, same hate.

Channel 4 claim the terrorist has been identified as Abu Izzadeen - a name you might've heard before.

Awaiting confirmation though.

That's the name I've been hearing, too.

I'm ashamed to say I'll have to eat my own words today. I have been busy planting Gladioli Bulbs all week and haven't had much time to keep track of the news, I thought my day was bad having stomach cramp all morning and then getting intermittently rained off in the afternoon. Whilst waiting for the weather, I was sitting in my colleagues tractor with him and we had by then run out of much to say, so I asked him if he'd seen the news this morning as I hadn't. Turns out we both hadn't so I shrugged and said 'well I guess nothing important will happen today anyway'. Then a bit later we heard some of the news on the radio and I now feel a little guilty.

We will have to wait for the official report to confirm who the attacker was, but I will still be annoyed if he was one who 'slipped the net' on the government radar as a known threat. No matter how hard any government can prepare to stop attacks a terrorist can still break through. If there is any positive to what happened today, its that the emergency services were prepared and a hospital was right near by. I guess that the deceased policeman's role may in future by done by two people or one armed officer. Lets all hope the injured make good recoveries.

He was the monkey in Disney's Aladdin, wasn't he?

A strange name for a converted Islamic extremist terrorist to choose.

He is still in prison?

Sentenced in 2016 for a custodial sentence of 2 years.

There is some confusion

Also, this should have its own thread surely. Mods alerted.

No idea. I tend to stick to the Beeb for my info, and they've not given a name.

It's certainly OK to start another thread about this latest terrorist attack - would probably make more sense than discussing it here.

Done.

 Ketara wrote:


Then you should understand the basic flaw in trying to assess causation when the evidence is so terribly, terribly incomplete for testing and verification purposes.
To put it in a scientific analogy (your preferred approach), you're attempting to figure out how to build a watch based upon a description of a single watch cog by a bloke who never actually saw it, but compiled his description by sifting through the descriptions of loads of other people about different kinds of machinery. Most of those people never saw a single watch cog either, and those that did didn't call it that and only saw it from far away at a funny angle. If you're really lucky, you might get equally flawed descriptions of one or two more cogs! But that's your lot.

So? Science started on the basis of terribly incomplete information. If you work on the principle that we should apply any theory of causality because of lack testing and verification then we would still be in the stone age.

Also you are misrepresenting scientific theory. You take the data you have to hand and make a prediction. You then see how that prediction pans out with more data (time). Whether you make a correct or incorrect you now take this additional data and then make another prediction and so. The cog analogy you've used is wrong because it assumes you can't test the theory. What really happens is that you get the data for how people saw a cog and then you predict one that should work based on this data. If it doesn't work then you can gather more data, more perspectives and take what you have learnt yourself from building the cog and re-predict one that might work and repeat. It is an active iterative process, research, theorise, design, build, test and repeat. It's not a simple case of looking through historical data and trying to work out which bits are relevant and which aren't.

It's why contemporary economic theory is disproved every ten years despite their vastly complicated mathematic modelling. You can never replicate laboratory conditions in real life, where new people, new thoughts, new technology, and new possibilities are constantly generated over and over.

It's only disproved because there is not enough data. I've noted this before but I can't tell you how individual particles move in a box but I can tell you what pressure those particles exert on the box. It's just having enough data to allow you to create more accurate predictions. Over time you will find those economic predictions will improve, it's just that the economic cycle takes decades (and we don't know whether there may be very long term trends yet unseen). You are arguing on the basis of a humans lifetime, it can take much longer than that to achieve enough data to start making decent predictions where there are long cycles. As for replicating laboratory conditions in real life, yes you can, the same processes apply. You are confusing that lab conditions control a lot of factors to test individual effects, so you can determine what the cause and effect are. In real life you have a lot of these lab conditions all applying at once so you have a complex system. But multiple lab tests can tease these apart over time. This is how we have to got to the relatively accurate forecasts we have now (though in this case lab generally means computer simulations)

 Whirlwind wrote:

So? Science started on the basis of terribly incomplete information. If you work on the principle that we should apply any theory of causality because of lack testing and verification then we would still be in the stone age.

Science has to have the ability to repeat tests under controllable circumstances. Otherwise it can't prove anything. Good luck proving the molecular composition of water when all you have to go on is a thirdhand hundred year old account of what it looks like.

Also you are misrepresenting scientific theory. You take the data you have to hand and make a prediction. You then see how that prediction pans out with more data (time). Whether you make a correct or incorrect you now take this additional data and then make another prediction and so. The cog analogy you've used is wrong because it assumes you can't test the theory.

And with that recognition you've pointed out the glaring flaw in trying to treat history like science. The simple fact that history can't be tested. You can't generate new data, or new studies, because it's already happened, and only happens in that precise context with those precise factors once. And you don't even have a fraction of the data from that one occurrence.

It's only disproved because there is not enough data. I've noted this before but I can't tell you how individual particles move in a box but I can tell you what pressure those particles exert on the box. It's just having enough data to allow you to create more accurate predictions. Over time you will find those economic predictions will improve, it's just that the economic cycle takes decades (and we don't know whether there may be very long term trends yet unseen). You are arguing on the basis of a humans lifetime, it can take much longer than that to achieve enough data to start making decent predictions where there are long cycles. As for replicating laboratory conditions in real life, yes you can, the same processes apply. You are confusing that lab conditions control a lot of factors to test individual effects, so you can determine what the cause and effect are. In real life you have a lot of these lab conditions all applying at once so you have a complex system. But multiple lab tests can tease these apart over time. This is how we have to got to the relatively accurate forecasts we have now (though in this case lab generally means computer simulations)

The wonderful thing about history is that additional time passing makes less data available. Not more. Eyewitnesses die. Original documents are lost. Terrain changes, governments meddle. Artifacts disintegrate. So actually, you tend to lose data as opposed to gaining it. Meaning your 'multiple lab tests' are working off less and less data as time goes on.

For example, Frederic Manning wrote a biography of William White back in the 1920's. He had access to all White's personal papers, interviews with people who knew him, and so on. I, meanwhile, am sitting here much later on trying to tease out White's relationship with Armstrong many years later, and I have none of those things. All I have to work off is what Manning bothered to include. Which he could have misunderstood or misread. He also could have left less flattering bits out. The fact that I have a greater contextual knowledge than Manning goes some way to redressing the balance, but ultimately? I'm performing the same lab test (assessing White's character) with a hundredth of the data. Whoever comes after me in another fifty years will probably have less still.

Good luck generating new data to test a hypothesis under those conditions!

History is all about interpretation based on evidence. No one can ever know the exact details of the past, even with the huge amount of data generated in modern circumstances because everything is filtered through the human experience. The scientific method struggles in this environment.
However, Whirlwind is broadly right in that historical events can be useful as indicators of possible trends. You are correct that the precise conditions will never exist again, but that hardly matters when you're talking about broad trends.
Having seen a recent rise in extreme political ideals in the recent past, it's not implausible that people will be alert to identifying things that look, and feel, similar happening again, even though there is the most tenuous link.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
He was the monkey in Disney's Aladdin, wasn't he?

A strange name for a converted Islamic extremist terrorist to choose.

"Abu" is the construct state of the semitic "ab" meaning "father". Abu Mazen, for instance, is one of Mahmoud Abbas's nicknames.

 r_squared wrote:

However, Whirlwind is broadly right in that historical events can be useful as indicators of possible trends. You are correct that the precise conditions will never exist again, but that hardly matters when you're talking about broad trends..

The broad trends are drawn from those fallible histories though. To draw back to my earlier example with regards to pre-war jingoism, someone sitting in Whirlwind's seat can sit there and draw his theories for contemporary policy out of broad trends such as those. Learning the lessons of the past, and all that malarkey.

But when the actual existence of those historical trends themselves are thrown into question due to the inherent fallibility and interpretative nature of historical writing, where does that leave your application of them to contemporary events?

I'll throw out another example I've referred to before. British declinism. Several aspects from a drop in British share of world trade to the growth of America. Very strong historical basis, dozens of books mutually supporting the concept. Lots of British politicians read many of them, referred to the idea in speeches regarding policy they were making. It's even sunk in as a cultural belief now to an extent.

But now? Enough historians have gone 'hang on a second' and disproved so many great chunks of it that the entire concept is now a historical laughing stock. It was a classic self-reinforcing paradigm (to throw Kuhn, the master of scientific process out there) strung through general histories.

This in turn means that all those politicians basing their policies and world view on that historical concept....were wrong. And there is no 'right' answer to replace it with, because any existing piece of scholarship is equally likely to be thrown out in a hundred years, and the more time goes on the harder it becomes to have any bloody clue what happened in the first place.


Unless you're going to talk in the most simplistic and obvious of causative historical terms (something like 'Generally people have been more likely to murder people they hate than those they love'), you're wasting your time mining the past for 'lessons'. I don't deny that the idea holds attraction, and superficially (or even to a more medium depth) the idea seems to hold water. It's only once you start dissecting the epistemological roots of the matter that it becomes obvious just how flawed the concept is.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-39355165

They're struggling to recruit teachers again. I'm not surprised, funnily enough, while being told what an easy, holiday laden, well paid job it is, recruitment and retention are terrible! And schools pay large amounts of their budgets into supply staff meaning they have less resources for the school.

They seem to think the solution is making it more attractive, but however big the bursary to train it doesn't change how hard and under valued the job is. One person comments on the BBC that 'they're constantly on strike because they have to do a day's work, bless them'.

I typically work 8-4, my day is filled mostly with teaching lessons, some admin tasks and answering various 'urgent' emails, occasional meetings, and an hour of break times. The lesson planning and marking is largely done on top of that because I've only a couple free periods during the working week. I usually go home, and work to 8 or later. Once you take out breaks and travelling, I probably still do a 45-50 hour week before things like parents evening where I stay until 7.30. I can't physically do all the marking and planning, I already give up evenings and part of weekends and some stuff never gets done. If only I did 'a day's work' I'd be much happier.

If you're outside the London area, a starting teacher does all that for £23K, before tax. Ready for that? That why something like half of new teachers have packed it in within 2 years. If only it were as easy as politicians, the newspapers and ignorant public tell us.

Teaching has never been a super-easy job. My Mum was a teacher in the 70s and 80s, and I can remember her bringing marking home even then, though it absolutely wasn't every evening or even every week. It's gotten much worse since then. I don't know anyone teaching in any sector of education who manages to fit everything into a 40-hour week.

For a few years I wanted to be a teacher but I've gone right off the idea. It's a lot of hard thankless work. It would depend on what school you're at of course but I think it would be a horrible job these days.

As terrible as yesterday was, we can't afford to take our eyes of the ball, the bigger picture. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance:

A special report from The Guardian on the Tory election expenses scandal. It's a long read, but a good read IMO.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/mar/23/conservative-election-scandal-victory-2015-expenses