when did the MET start doing terrorism

"the climate is grim, but the weather can change". since when did the meteorological office start doing terror forecasts?

A round of yay for the entire bar

Best news I've heard in ages.

"Yates said he expected it could soon be reduced to "substantial" by MI5's Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre."

Now ... how does he expect that? Does he expect that the putative cause of any "highly likely" attack will soon be arrested, tried and taken off the streets? Or is the reading on the possibilometizer data miner slowly decreasing? Or is it all just so much political bullshit?

so the connection is?

the gravy train?

when there's lots of money available for "security" projects, the threat is high or immediate or whatever they use to scare us.

when there isn't so much money available to waste on silly projects, the threat isn't quite so high.

I smell a rat and his name isn't Osama.....

@John Dee

No, the alert level is primarily to keep the people afraid. It's currently near the top, so it must be reduced quietly now, so there is some head-room for an increase later. You know, when the next un-popular war needs to be pushed.

We wouldn't notice a 100% cut

Apart from being a few billion a year better off.

What have they done so far with the billions of quid funding?

Captured a bag of fertilizer, deported some students, locked up a handful of nut cases who probably couldn't set a fart alight.

More people die on our roads in a fortnight than have died from terrorism in the last decade. If you were given a big wad of money and told to go save lives with it using it to fight terror would be at the bottom of a very long list.

Wot about the IRA?

When the Irish were blowing up your property a few decades again, and causing considerable casualties , you didn't need all the anti-terrorist laws and enormously expensive terror units.

@elderlybloke

No, we didn't need them 'cos the civvy population wasn't running around like a headless chickens convention, too scared to even fart.

Our security forces managed as well as could be expected, but we were blessed with the enormous funding sent to the terrorists by our colonial cousins - the misty-eyed Sons of Erin whose families hadn't set foot in Ireland for 5 or 6 generations...

Their judiciary also refused point-blank to send any escaped convicted felons back, claiming they were "just poor disadvantaged freedom fighters".

Funny how their point of view changed somewhat after a) Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City, and b) the events of 9/11.

The Brits have, down the years, been just too bloody-minded and obstreperous for a terrorist campaign to really succeed, and it's that very fact which alarms our current apology for a government, and encourages them to institute a permanent state of alert (and, they hope, fear) in order to render us more malleable and controllable.

We should ensure they never succeed.

from ANOTHER elderly (well, 59-ish) bloke