As someone said on the wireless this morning, why did no-one think to ask the guy what he was doing or what the fumes were? Perhaps they did, who knows.

But there's certainly no need to treat everty incident as the next Hiroshima in terms of cordoning off.

"Hodges" - love that!

The police are damned if they do and damned if they don't. They can only act by the guidelines set down for them by politicians and policy makers; your average copper is a sensible person with good common sense and rational thinking (that's how they get chosen for the job) and they often feel bound by ridiculous Health and Safety and bureaucracy.

I spent three hours of sitting on a closed motorway recently due to a comparatively minor fuel spillage so I have a certain sympathy for the OP's comments.

Life is a risky business and security is now totally overdone. I remember when one could photograph scenes at airports and railway stations as a hobby without being arrested. My chum had his contact lens solution confiscated at Manchester airport as he has a few drops left in a bottle that was originally 20ml oversize.

Air carriers have killed quite a few people in the last decade without the involvement of terrorists but nobody worries about that.

I just wish I could be allowed to assess my own risks and take responsibility for them without the involvement of "the authorities".

m glad most of the respondees on this thread have no positions of influence in the emergency services.

Well, one does get the impression that the Police Service rather like to turn a drama into a crisis.

Suppose he was a bomber. He's been found out. What does he do? Explode it.

When Richard reid attempted to blow up flight 63, he was successfully subdued by several passengers and restrained.

We don't allow the most reckless people to set the standard in society (bankers excepted!), so why do we allow the most shrill, risk averse mimsers to drag the country down to their level??

I am doubtfull that it was a passenger on the bus that contacted the police.

I suspect it was one of the toll booth operators had seen 'vapour' as the coach went through the pay booth.

The police reaction was understandable but could well have been checked out first by a couple of motorway policemen.

Then if it looked suspicious then send in the lot.

Also Id like to point out that not enough people know about electronic cigarettes to make an informed decision.

Was the person in question looking suspicious because he wasn't sure if he could use the e-cig on a coach or not ?

No smoking does not necessarily apply to e-cigs but that's another discussion for another place and time.

I think that some in this thread have no grasp of "threat".

Law-abiding citizens expect the police react to the perceived threat - not simply react to the reality as it eventually unfolds.

There's a parallel - all through the Cold War, and even now, the Russians send bombers \to invade Western air space to test the defences - we never know if they're carrying live nuclear bombs or just leaflets, but we ALWAYS send up armed fighters with orders to shoot down if the Russians don't turn back out of our air space. The contributors who think that somehow the police should have known up front this was inoccuous presumably would have us sending up an unarmed police helicopter to investigate armed aggression in the skies.

God help us if these contributors start to have any influence on police, military or politicians.

However, the risk borne by each individual is tiny. Crudely speaking (~1/60,000,000)-considerably less likely than winning the lottery.

Try telling that to the 52 dead on 7/7.. I am afraid according to your stats.. the chances of 52 being killed is so small as to be ignorable. So we can ignore yor probability as being untrue based on factuial evidence.

The irony is that travelling by road poses much more of a threat than terrorism-roughly 2000 people die on the roads each year. So, a risk based assessment would close the motorway on safety grounds, but ignore the terrorist threat

Well as fewer accidents haopen on motorways vs normal roads, your comparison is invalid..

The final point is that terrorists generally do not respond to ordinary incentives like long jail sentences.

Agree. They see death as a reward.

They know that the government will never directly aquiesce to their cause, but they seek to cause maximum disruption.

From what I have read, they try to kill as many as possible. See the 7/7 co-ordinated bombing.

Usually, police/government response to terrorist attacks creates far more disruption than the bomb itself.

You mean that destroying a train and a bus through explosions does not cause much disruption? See also 7/7 or the IRA bombing of Manchester where the aftereffects lasted for years due to demoltion and rebuilding.

Well if your arguiments are typical of the depth of thought of those who are crticial of the police action, the police have nothing to fear.

Apart from getting your facts wrong, your conculsions are demoinstrably erroneous.

Edited by madf on 06/07/2012 at 18:49

First I wonder if some of those condemning the police in this thread have even read the news report. The vappur was coming from bag, not from the ciggy thing being openly smoked.

Since proper smoking is banned on coaches, it probably didn't occur to anyone that this was a smoking substitute - I certainly wouldn't as I've never come across them.

Well, what a sad world we live in whereby the first thought that enters a person's head when they see vapour emerging from a fellow passenger's bag is "BOMB! Help! Police!"

My first reaction would be that of concern for the person's belongings and I'd ask them if there was something wrong with their baggage (maybe a laptop battery overheating for instance).

There's a very nice coal mine in Chile where all the lily-livered frightened people could live in a safe commune where everything is either monitered by officials and anything remotely risky is banned.

Maybe then the rest of us could get our country back,

There are actually 2 points banana is making, yes, shut it down for something serious, BUT why in heavens name block up the roads when there is a simple car acccident and if the thing was removed the traffic could get by. The problem is the attitude of "we can close it so we will" attitude prevalent in the uk. I know some police officers, and while most of them are devoted to their jobs, are weary of the form filling they have to do. One begged me not to report something as it would take up 2 yes TWO hours of his time. There is another (a lady) (to be polite) that I wouldn't put in charge of a rice pudding, because she would make sure it was a lowfat politically correct rice pudding with just the correct finish to the topping.

As for the millions in Iraq and elsewhere, well that is where swmbo is from, and unlike zimbabwe, (and rwanda) Iraq has vast quanities of something our american friends wanted to get their hands on. under the previous dictator christians had the same rights and were protected as much as anyone else, but now in dire straits.

I think generally that the "operational rules" for the Police have over the years become much more unbreakable, whereas before they allowed for decisions to be made by local officers based on local knowledge and common sense.

That being said, there IMHO has been a sharp decline in "common sense", not just amongst Police officers, but within society as a whole, partly because the majority have allowed the fringes of political opinion, appeasers of law-breakers and related health & safety brigade (none of whom have any common sense - many have never worked outside of politics/government pen-pushing/trade unions/the law/academia to know what the "real world" is actually like) to gradually encroach on every aspect of their lives without a hint of protest until now (possibly too late to do anything?).

It doesn't help that thesedays the "political policeman" is much more common, and likely to be holding the most senior positions (especially Chief Constable) in the force, whereby they appear to be more concerned about protecting themslves and their ilk, and deflecting blame onto politicians, the public and anyone else they can think of when they act as we've been discussing. I thought they were their to protect the public and (as far as possible) ensure that we live in a "peaceful and pleasant land" without it turning into a police state or one where those who break the law are given more rights than those who obey it.

I think we all have to look inward to see what we can do to a) help the police see sense and change they way they do their job, and b) don't just blame politicians for all of these problems - we often contribute to them ourselves with often selfish, uncaring and uncharitable/inconsiderate behaviour (very poor driving habits, e.g. inappropriate speed, driving too close, caerless/danagerous driving, road rage, etc...) towards eachother and the police themselves.