Sharm el Sheikh

Durhamjen

You are obviously knowledgable about what has happened so can I ask 'Exactly what information should Cameron have given Putin.?

Where did I say that, Iam?

This is what I said.

"David Cameron is supposed to be our head of state. He is supposed to want us to fight in Syria along with the Russians.
Giving Putin the information would, in my opinion, have actually shown a bit of statesmanship. After all, the cold war is supposed to be over, isn't it?"

Nowhere did I say that the UK is supposed to be fighting in Syria with Putin.

Yet, a British bloke is now preparing to fly out to the space station with a Russian and an Amercan on a Russian space craft.

It's all just a game to our heads of state, they think they're on Mount Olympus.

Durhamjen, you say that th uk is supposed to be fighting in Syria with Putin. No, there hasn't been a vote in parliament on that. The air raids in which th uk supports US bombing in Syria is aimed at Assad and in support of the rebels. Cameron spoke recently in favour of regime change. The Russians are supporting Assad.
How do you know tha the Egyptians and Russian governments are getting their formation about British intelligence from our media, rather Han via diplomatic sources. Honestly, I find that difficult to believe

Tegan, I'm sure you're right, intelligence is a dangerous murky business, and keeping us safe a security nightmare. We certainly do live in a very terrifying world where there are no easy answers as nothing is in black and white. All we can do is trust our government of the day to keep us safe, and say our prayers!!

Not sure if it was from watching The Imitation Game or a documentary about that time, but it was pointed out how important it was, when gathering information, not to act upon everything because, by doing that you made it obvious that you had the means to gather information from certain sources. We don't know how much information is acted upon these days [or how many terrible things have been averted]; I guess we have to trust the people out there that are doing everything they can to protect us. It's a very frightening world we live in these days .

well, exactly. A lot of what politicians say about what they do or don't know about lots of things are often for their own public consumption, which could well be case in this scenario. Putin needs public support at home so what better than to blame the west for his own failings, that is not banning Russian flights immediately after this awful event, as we undoubtedly would have had it been a UK plane. That of course is somehow the fault of the west and not his own bumbling?!!!!!!

too

I would hate to think we would keep any life saving information to ourselves, regardless of who the innocent victims-to-be were. On the other hand, would we be asking to much of our people to expect them to safeguard other nations as well as ourselves?

I don't expect to be told too much about intelligence reports and whom they're shared with. Isn't that the point of having information gleaned in such a way?

You are over-thinking it dj.

Resuccuated?

The Cold War has been resuccuated for quite a while now.

I didn't even consider tit-for-tat jingl especially when so many innocent lives have been lost. But I did hope that instead of driving Russia and the West further apart, it might actually unite us more in the fight against Daesh. Sadly I doubt it as Putin's ego makes him an unlikely team player.

I don't actually think that any of us are in any position to criticize government action on the intelligence front as none of us are privy to what goes on between nations at international level. We can only make a judgement by what the media churns out, some of which can be a bit dubious. It is the prime duty of any government to protect and defend all its citizens, and, thank goodness we have a government that acted immediately, when alerted, to do exactly that. What would people have prefered? business as usual while politicians dithered around, with a meeting here, and a bit of hand wringing there, as another plane was blown out of the sky?!! We give the terrorists enough to laugh themselves silly over at our expense on a depressingly regular basis, without giving them another incident on a plate to congratulate themselves over.

As I said earlier, I thought the cold war was over. Surely if Cameron had told Putin before the media, Putin would not have been able to knock the west.
Aren't we just playing into Putin's hands by not sharing intelligence about something so terrible?
The other thing is, as I said, it's not diplomatic to tell the papers before telling Putin and Egypt. It's making it look as though they are not important enough. I think it's also disrespectful to those dead Russians.

Nobody has yet said what they would say if the reverse had happened.

I mean Anya. (Two names merging in my brain now)

Maybe Alya but tit-for-tat really should not come into it. Not where innocent human lives are concerned.

Only verging ???

middle missile

You are just using this as another chance to knock Cameron dj. That's not really good with something like this. Verging on the obsessive now.

Is this the same Putin who denied a Russian-built middle brought down a passenger plane over Ukraine recently?

Exactly sunseeker.

dj our people only picked up the information after the event. As I said, the awful event itself should have alerted the Russians to stop all flights, and do what we are doing to get their people home. To Putin it's just a chance to knock the West, any way he can.

Maybe the British government is hesitant about sharing intelligence, that wouldn't have prevented the bomb anyway, with a country that was responsible for the downing of a plane over Ukraine last year that had nine Britons on board.

Yes, that's what I have read, sunseeker, but for Putin and whoever in Egypt to find out about it the same way we have is not very diplomatic.
Egypt is still not accepting it was a bomb, despite GCHQ's and the USA's intelligence, and probably because they still want loads of holiday makers.