LETTER: Lessons should be learned

The reaction to the attack has been depressingly predictable.

An unseemly rush of ‘back covering’ and finger pointing!

Our political leaders were falling over themselves to blame each other for a dangerous terrorist being released early based on what seems little more than his ability to convince a parole panel that he had changed his ways and the fact that our legal system is loathe to make any criminal serve his full sentence.

There are the obligatory calls for ‘questions to be answered’ and ‘lessons to be learnt’. Certainly questions need to be asked not least of which are:

1. What possessed the powers that be to think a committed terrorist could be treated the same as a ‘normal, run of the mill’ criminal and released early?

2. Who thought the fact that he was wearing an electronic tag was an adequate monitoring regime for a trip to the capital?

3. How fast would the police response have been if the attack had happened in Wakefield or anywhere outside the capital?

As for ‘lessons being learned’? They won’t be! They never are!

There will be a couple of ‘knee jerk’ headline grabbing changes, that will probably make an already disjointed system worse, then everything will be forgotten until the next time!

We need to understand that we are, effectively, at war with fantastics who want us to stop being who and what we are and accept their ways and beliefs!

They are not going to change just because we lock them up and we are certainly not going to be safe if, having caught them, we release them half way through their sentence!

Richard Saberton

via email