Tenants launch legal action to stop missiles being put on roof for Olympics

Tenants launch legal action to stop missiles being put on roof for Olympics

www.guardian.co.uk

Council tenants in east London have launched a legal action to prevent the Ministry of Defence stationing surface-to-air missiles on the roof of their tower block during the Olympics.

Solicitors instructed by the residents' association at the Fred Wigg Tower in Leytonstone have formally lodged objections to plans for the missile battery to be manned 24 hours a day while the flats are subject to armed police patrols.

The association is seeking an injunction preventing the ground-based air

(visit the link for the full news article)

Personally I agree with the tenants, and the majority of the citizens of London who don't want missiles mounted on buildings in the middle of their city during the olympics.

The unfortunate thing is that the MOD will not budge and most likely have laws and guidelines that allow this sort of practice to happen. This legal action might as well be considered a waste of time but at least the citizens are making their voices heard.

Welcome to the Big Brother state where they can mount missiles on your apartment building in the middle of a metropolitan area. What's next, nuclear missile silos in times square?

www.guardian.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

Originally posted by Corruption Exposed
Welcome to the Big Brother state where they can mount missiles on your apartment building in the middle of a metropolitan area. What's next, nuclear missile silos in times square?

Isn't that one of the most heavily surveillance camera cities in the world already?

Nuclear silos in times square?

Keep them great outside of the box ideas coming

Good find
Here is a thread from a couple weeks ago regarding londoners forming a human shield.. Trying to keep the missiles out of their neighborhoods!
www.abovetopsecret.com...

have formally lodged objections to plans for the missile battery to be manned 24 hours a day

Is the complaint against the batteries or against them being manned.?
Are the missile batteries already in place because the Olympics are not far off,and i dont know how long it takes to set up a missile battery?

reply to post by Corruption Exposed


My concerns are not only the big brother aspect, its a tactic of domestic control, but, wouldnt it stand to reason that these would make great 'terrorist' targets?? If you could damage them enough to explode, they are already in a domestic/urban area!! Obvi they would be guarded and manned, but its probably not that far fetched!! A battery of missiles exploding could cause serious damage and casualties if located where they are supposedly going to be installed...

reply to post by Nspekta


I agree that this is another form of their systematic implementation of domestic control. People are already desensitized to the police state but things like this only make the general public more numb to the fact that we have no say in what goes on.

Mounting missiles in a residential area is a bit overboard IMO.

Didnt NATO or the UN or someone say that placing military equipment in or on residential property is Illegal during one of the Iraqi wars?

reply to post by Nspekta


That was my concern as well.

Adding a missile battery to the top of a civilian structure turns it into a military installation, and as such makes it a much higher priority target if anything bad was going to potentially happen during the Olympics.

Shame your Parliament didn't give you guys anything like the 3rd Amendment over there. At least on this side of the pond we'd have a good legal arguement to say NO.

reply to post by Juggernog


NO, but they did argue that civilian deaths are unavoidable if the enemy places such things in residential area's. It isn't illegal to fight in a city.

Not sure what the residents can do, to be honest. The Defence of the Realm Act alone gives the Government carte blanche to do as they please, without having to give a reason.

Which, ironically, is one of the many reasons I will laugh at those who think this is some sort of Orwellian indoctrination. The laws have been on the books for the Government to do as they please for a hundred years, they rarely use them mind you.

As for the CCTV comments, and I get really tired of pointing this out, but 95% is privately owned, as in shops, homes etc. Only 5% is run by any kind of authority and most of them are just traffic monitoring cams. I will also point out that major US cities such as Chicago, New York and LA have far more "officially monitored" CCTV than London has, but the Yanks seem to ignore this when bashing the UK as some sort of Police State.

reply to post by stumason


Ahh ok, the US must of mentioned it as propaganda to make Saddam seem even more evil, lol.

I didnt say anything about Cameras

I support the tenants on this.

I don't understand why the MOD think this is a good idea.

Surely if such weapons were necessary then it would already be too late.

The damage caused by missiles is likely to make matters worse.

What are they going to do, strike a suicide bomber?

Sounds stupid to me!

What type of attack would justify the missiles?

I can't think of a single scenario that missiles would provide a tangible defence from.

reply to post by Juggernog


I know you didn't, a poster above you did

Apologies for any insinuation otherwise on my part.

Originally posted by Threegirls
What type of attack would justify the missiles?

I can't think of a single scenario that missiles would provide a tangible defence from.

Given they are Rapier and Starstreak systems, they are only point defence SAM's, so are to be used as a last resort if the rest of the Air defence envelopes are breached. One possible scenario would be a light aircraft or helo, flying low and having evaded the Typhoons and destroyers on the Thames.

Granted, downing one over an urban area is definitely risky, but it may well be less damaging than allowing such an aircraft to slam into the stadia which will be packed with tens of thousands of people.

Bottom line is that they have to be prepared for any eventuality they can think of. This is not the first time either that such measures have been used. Both Beijing and Athens had SAM's and fighter jets to protect against airborne threats. They are damned if they and damned if they don't with you lot. If they didn't prepare and something happened, you'd all scream "false flag"!

reply to post by stumason


Government or Private, either way, it is the most Video Surveillanced City in the world.

Source

The British capital has more surveillance cameras monitoring its citizens than any other major city in the world. The highly visible gadgets are posted on the corners of many buildings, on new buses and in every subway station. Since 2003, the license plate of every car driving into central London during weekdays is filmed as part of a program to reduce traffic congestion. London charges a fee to cars and also uses the films to catch and fine cheats. In all, there are at least 500,000 cameras in the city, and one study showed that in a single day a person could expect to be filmed 300 times

Originally posted by pauljs75
Shame your Parliament didn't give you guys anything like the 3rd Amendment over there. At least on this side of the pond we'd have a good legal arguement to say NO.

No you wouldn't - the soldiers are not being quartered in the buildings, and the residents are not the owners - these are council owned rental properties.

reply to post by SLAYER69


That article is somewhat misleading as it doesn't make the distinction between a camera in a corner shop or supermarket, an ANPR camera or an actual monitored camera.

Using the figures from the article itself, however, it says that Croydon has 500 CCTV camera's actually operated by the local authority (including ANPR which isn't strictly the same as it is used to capture number plates for congestion charging).

Now, Croydon is a good example as it is precisely the same size as Manhattan, area wise. Manhattan operates a network of nearly 5,000 monitored, "authority controlled" CCTV camera's, 10 times as many as Croydon (for a population only 5 times the size) and none of these are ANPR, they are all for watching people.

www.nyclu.org...

Carry on trying to convince yourself (and us) that the UK is some Police state, but you guys in the US have it much worse and you don't even know it.

If the olympics were in north korea, the missles would be part of the competition.


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

Originally posted by stumason
Carry on trying to convince yourself (and us) that the UK is some Police state, but you guys in the US have it much worse and you don't even know it.

No offense.

No matter how you slice it, London is the Surveillance capital of the world. I've never called it a "Police State" that's your spin on it. I was implying that London is already monitored to death with regards to watching it's citizenry.

If you feel that means it's close to being a Police state then that's your take on it.