Appalling News

I have just re-read my previous post. I think the expression I used about someone of a different skin colour, "Stick [ing] out like a sore thumb" might seem to be offensive. That was not my intention I was purely using those words as a common turn of phrase.
I meant that anyone who obviously looks very different and in a minority to those around them could feel particularly vulnerable.

My apologies to anyone who found that turn of phrase insensitive.

Gosh NellieM no-one could possibly take offense at that! I think we are all empathic people on here, trying to see both sides of every question.

But no-one can really make sense of what happened to Lee Rigby. We can talk about religion, race relations and ethnicities till the cows come home, but the lad was murdered in cold blood, and nothing can excuse or even explain that. It seems like it was a conspiracy to murder a local soldier, so as far as I'm concerned that was an act of treachery and terrorism.

I think the murderer himself will go to prison and not see freedom until he is a very old man, if ever. I think the others in the conspiracy, if it was one, will also get extremely long sentences. That will be justice.

I mean no disrepect to the family of the murdered soldier, but lets get a perspective here.
I fully accept these killings have security implications.
We have been here before with these terrorist killings. It was the IRA in the 1980s. It is just the focus has shifted from the Republican Northern Ireland alleged Catholics to the extremist Islamists. It is still dangerous though!
Just Google " Man/woman stabbed/beaten to death in uk street!" or
"Woman stabbed to death by partner in UK"
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/man-stabbed-to-death-in-oxford-street-6281673.html

The two women who are killed every week by their partners or ex-partners is often because the woman has left their violent partners, or the men were in a bad mood, or their dinners were late.

As some of our GNrs sadly know, some people get killed for no obvious reason such as being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We should never never let the tide of revulsion at this particular killing overwhelm those other senseless killings that happen in our country. Most do not make massive headlines.

Two woman a week in the UK. People whose skin is the wrong colour. Remember that awful term Paki Bashing?
Stephen Lawrence. Damilola Taylor and far too many more! So it goes on and on in an endless waste of lives.
Most UK murders have no claims to religious or political idealism.

It's the complete innocence of the victim that makes some murders seem so unbearable.

Many, probably most, murders have a story behind them.

You have to remember that this was a young man who had served his Queen and country well.

Nelliemosser, I think if we are to digress into racism generally and violence against women it really needs a separate thread. I posted originally because this brutal killing was one that we had never seen the like of before and left everyone reeling.

On immigrants generally, I take someone else's point about how hard it is to start learning a new language well into adulthood. I do remember a while back when southern Europeans would come over to the UK and the older women would wear black and just mix with the family and not learn the language it happens in all communities. I even had one or two more distant branches of my father's family who were a bit guilty of that. Before anyone points it out I also acknowledge that there are British enclaves in say Spain who make no attempt to speak Spanish or integrate.

Whilst I also accept we have racist elements in our country I do also think we are further along the path of integration than a lot of the rest of Europe, with some eastern Europeans holding shameful racist views. One of my closest friends, a black woman of West Indian origin, moved both her and her son from south London to a village in Hampshire when he was a small child, because she wanted to remove him from gang culture when he became a teenager. He was the only black child at the school she sent him to. I asked her once if they had ever experienced prejudice there and she said she hadn't and on the contrary many of his classmates parents would offer to look after him when she was between childminders. She is a very personable character and wins people over very easily so possibly that was down to her.

It's a fact there is still more black on black crime committed than white on black crime, it seems almost a weekly event here in London that we hear of a stabbing of yet another black youth. Lets also not forget that racism works both ways and there have been incidents where a white person has been the victim and what of the girls being groomed by the many men of Pakistani origin what were these if not racist crimes? Any one remember a girl called Mary Ann Leneghan? a fifteen year old, stabbed to death by half a dozen black men and left bleeding and naked in a park in Reading with her friend who was also attacked in the same way but just about survived.

Don't get me wrong when I say this Bananas, but whilst I realise the torture and killing of Mary Ann was horrific, hauntingly so at the time, that is what I mean by most murders having a story behind them. The hate killing of a young serving solder on the streets of the UK is something different altogether.

I read in the Guardian a few days ago that one of the men who murdered the soldier had been sexually tortured in Kenya some years ago and it is alleged that MI5 were trying to recruit him as a spy. In fact, a couple of years ago he took legal action against MI5 for harrassment.

Seems he became radicalised after these experiences.

Oh, and he was also involved in an horrific stabbing incident when he was 16 when a friend was 'cut to bits' by a (white) mentally ill attacker.

I only mention it because there is often a 'story'.

I would like to make it absolutely clear that this in no way excuses or even adequately explains the horrific thing he then went on to do to an innocent man.

I meant more a 'story' behind how the victims of many murders came to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Obviously all murders are wrong. But this particular victim did nothing to put himself in the line of fire, as it were.

No, he didn't. He was a randomly selected innocent victim.

And partners stabbing each other in possibly jealous rage is entirely different from a deliberate setting out by three armed people in a car to find an unarmed soldier to savage to death . Has anyone else asked themselves if he might have been spared if he had been a black man wearing Help for Heroes t shirt? This has crossed my mind as they might have thought he was a muslim too. Each man's death diminishes ......

For all the talk or racism, the IRA, Windrush, etc. this murder was different. The motivation wasn't anything to do with someone's colour, or political allegiance or sex, it was due to the fact that certain elements of the Moslem community have decided that we, in the West, are decedent and the enemy. That's why 7/7 happened, people born and brought up in this country thought it was required by their faith to blow up innocent people. That's why this innocent soldier was a trophy.

There is nothing racial about this, it's religious or a perversion of a religion.

When I visit Moslem countries, I am perfectly happy to cover my arms and legs and, if visiting a mosque, my head. When I walk in parts of London I don't expect to have to do the same but that how it feels.

There is no comparison to the IRA. Given the situation in Northern Ireland, they had a legitimate cause some would say. What legitimate cause to these radical Islamists have? How do we appease them?

I despair when anyone asking this question is accused of being racist, right wing or a bigot.

I don't think we should 'appease' extremists, ever. Extremism is like blackmail. It is an effort to bully people into submission. I think we should be strong in our condemnation of all terrorist acts, whoever perpetrates them, and simply keep on saying that this kind of behaviour is unacceptable. There are no excuses. It is wrong.

It doesn't matter how aggrieved people feel about this, that or the other – butchering innocent fellow citizens is wrong.

I just heard the statement made by the family of one of the murderers from Woolwich. How hard it must have been for them and what courage they have shown in writing that statement. I do have so much sympathy for them and think they must really be suffering.

Prefer to save my sympathy for the. Poor soldiers chid, widow parents and fiancé.

Beyondawful

Both families deserve our sympathy. Turn the other cheek or an eye for an eye?

The Christian mother of the main murderer tried for years to straighten him out, even moving away from London. But he went back. He converted to Islam about 10 years ago, and converts can often be the worst.

I think having ex army son makes me short on sympathy for the murderers family

I don't follow that reasoning celebgran.

I think you're probably thinking with your heart?

Have you read the book or seen the film 'We Need to Talk About Kevin'?

I DO have a tremendous sympathy for the family of the alleged killer of Lee Rigby and I admire them for publicly expressing their condolences and for condemning the killing. That doesn't in any way detract from the feelings of sorrow I have for Lee's own family - indeed this week has been very, very hard as I've been re-living my own week of hell as this tragedy has come at the same time as we are mourning our own soldier. I have all too clear an idea of what the Rigby family is going through right now.

Is it possible to have a discussion about this horrifying and tragic event without feeling the necessity to "take sides"? A young man is dead and his family is grieving. Why mobs taking to the streets shouting hatred is going to redress that, I don't understand. Why two people fire bombing a mosque is going to make matters better, I understand even less.

Sel It seems your remark that "some might say" the IRA had "a legitimate cause" suggests that some acts of terrorism are more understandable than others. I strongly oppose violence, however legitimate the cause, but I believe if one group of people is violently oppressed by another group of people, pointless acts of retribution tend to follow. I therefore feel that remarks that characterise people as "different" or "other" merely serve to create a feeling of alienation and make matters worse.

I live in east London. My neighbours are muslims, as are several families in my street. While I have little time for the muslim religion, or indeed any organised religions, I have found my neighbours to be pleasant and friendly. Green Street, Forest Gate, is an area of London that is, I would say, around 95% muslim. I often go to a vegetarian restaurant there and I have never experienced a feeling of unease while in the area.

Yes, there may be aspects of each other's various cultures that are troubling or with which we disagree, but I feel we will all have a much safer society if we think more about what we have in common with one another than on what divides us.

GrannyA I really admire your ability to empathise with the feelings of both family, especially considering your own loss. The pain this must bring back