Lorry kills nine at Christmas market

[scooterscot]

How many refugees has Scotland taken in?

500,000

Revealed: The 500,000 English living in Scotland who are set to BLOCK independence (which makes up for all the expat Scots who don't have a vote)

[PurpleGorilla]

500,000

Revealed: The 500,000 English living in Scotland who are set to BLOCK independence (which makes up for all the expat Scots who don't have a vote)

Lol - good reply [emoji106]🏾

[shaunbhoy]

You might have some sensible things to say that would be interesting and may even change my views.

Well if he has he has kept them under wraps pretty well up to now!

[milanbenes]

I am very sorry to say, I predicted this, for the last ten years, my wife and I have spent the last weekend of November in Frankfurt visiting the Christmas Market and the Kaiser Wilhelm Bad [ https://www.kur-royal.de/en ] and this year we didn't make the trip as I calculated that the Christmas Market was too tempting a site for some kind of terrorist activity.

Unfortunately, I was right.

What surprises me is that the authorities didn't see the same risk and provide the right amount of security for the Christmas Markets across the country.

Very sad.

Milan.

[NotAllThere]

Nat please stop being so condescending in your replies. You might have some sensible things to say that would be interesting and may even change my views.

Aw. I was only teasing PG.

Lol, you would jump down people's throats if this thread had had early responses along the lines of "I wonder if the driver is a Muslim/ISIS/refugee". Yet it is acceptable for you to conjecture and theorise but not others.

No. I wouldn't have.

[jbond007]

I am very sorry to say, I predicted this, for the last ten years, my wife and I have spent the last weekend of November in Frankfurt visiting the Christmas Market and the Kaiser Wilhelm Bad [ https://www.kur-royal.de/en ] and this year we didn't make the trip as I calculated that the Christmas Market was too tempting a site for some kind of terrorist activity.

Unfortunately, I was right.

What surprises me is that the authorities didn't see the same risk and provide the right amount of security for the Christmas Markets across the country.

Very sad.

Milan.

Maybe they were of the opinion that since they aren't involved in any of the conflicts, have been largely compassionate of accepting refugees, this sort of things wouldn't happen on their home turf.

Unfortunately, incidents like these would make lives of genuine refugees even more difficult, possibly longer processing times now, detailed checks and so forth. I would imagine genuine refugees would shop out (should they find out) such people if they were living among them in their camp.

Though it seems the majority of common people in Germany are quite rational and not jumping to the right, calling for Merkel's head

[tomtomagain]

Maybe they were of the opinion that since they aren't involved in any of the conflicts, have been largely compassionate of accepting refugees, this sort of things wouldn't happen on their home turf.

Unfortunately that turned out to be a naive assumption.

They did have a failed suicide bombing attempt in the summer and a couple of other minor incidents and this attack looks like a re-run of Nice so you could argue that the German security forces should have been on top of a threat like this.

Though it seems the majority of common people in Germany are quite rational and not jumping to the right, calling for Merkel's head

Thankfully. But the performance of the German state over the next month will be critical. If they have a repeat of the New Year's day assaults this year ( or heaven forbid another attack ) then opinion could significantly harden against Merkel.

[NotAllThere]

Unfortunately that turned out to be a naive assumption.

I doubt they made that assumption. More likely they did a cost/benefit calculation and decided the risk was worth it. Now that may or may not have been monumentally stupid.

[VectraMan]

They did have a failed suicide bombing attempt in the summer and a couple of other minor incidents and this attack looks like a re-run of Nice so you could argue that the German security forces should have been on top of a threat like this.

Ban all lorries?

Not sure what they can do really. They said on the news that the lorry was nicked from Poland, so whether the perp was allowed to stay in Germany or not is largely irrelevant. Even if there were border controls, tens of thousands of lorries would be allowed through every day.

[sasguru]

I doubt they made that assumption. More likely they did a cost/benefit calculation and decided the risk was worth it..

There is a theory that Merkel accepted the large influx of Syrians as a part solution to the medium and long term German demographics problem.