• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Another Manchester Bomb?

A

Anonymous

Guest
Last night there was a bomb in manchester, it was set off in a controlled explosion. it was only a small bomb but a bomb is a bomb, it happend near the new UGC cinema in didsbury it was about 6:30pm and everywhere got sealed off and the roads closed but i can't find any news coverage of this anywhere. and i know for a fact it happend as my mum was there as where lots of my family who couldnt get to there car and saw the whole thing from a distance.

it seems like all the media is hiding it, i suppose with the commonwealth games starting this week they had good reason in not wanting to scare everyone. but is this a good thing, with the threat of the IRA for the past 30 years or so and the manchester bomb a few years back, its more than likely a bigger bomb could go off with the crowds expected in manchester over the next few weeks it could have devastating consequences.

I know ill be staying away!

EDIT: didsbury is where all the competitors are staying.
 
I used to work in central Bristol and there were regular scares: roads closed off, huge traffic diversions (it's never good at the best of times) and police everywhere. And it never made the news, despite BBC Bristol studios being 800 yards further up one of the main roads leading out of the centre, HTV West about a mile in the other direction, and most of the local radio stations being centrally based too. The only mention ever made was on radio traffic reports, where they'd announce that there were diversions "due to an incident". Not an accident, an incident.

Probably happens all the time in most major cities, we just don't get to hear about it (I only did cos I worked for the council, in one of the allegedly targetted buildings, and my step-bro's a cop). If you see a lot of Police, fire engines etc you just assume it's a crash and move on.

So that's Manchester and Bristol - dwellers of other cities care to comment?

Stu
 
early 90's in Doncaster I remember at least two bomb scares. The first time the station was evacuated (I was on it at time) and the second was in the town centre. Never remembered any mention in the papers though, including the local ones.
 
I think there is a big difference between a bomb scare and an actuall bomb in this case there was an actuall bomb. manchester does get its fair share of bomb scares and they also dont get to the press even when the BBC building was evacuated last summer. someone is shutting them up!
 
A few years ago an armed man held some people hostage in a house on my street. As soon as the alarm went up the Military Police arrived from the local barricks and completely surrounded the house and blocked off the roads. The next morning the roads were re-opended and all the troops had gone. There was absolpoutly no mention of the incident and I never did manage to find out what happened to the guy.
 
I think there is a big difference between a bomb scare and an actuall bomb in this case there was an actuall bomb.
Click to expand...

True, but you'd have thought that even a scare would get into the local papers.............ours always seem to be full of boring news (i.e. Cat in tree saved by budgie.....etc) & a scare should be at least a commentworthy event.
 
[crackle... hisss... interference temporarily clears]

The MIB will shortly be visiting MrChopper, and then the Manchester Bomb thread will be dele...

[crackle hiss crackle...]
 
How do you know there was a bomb in the car Mr C? Don't they blow up suspicious vehicles anyway? This would be suspicious if it was in a crucial place or if they got a tip off from some nutter who wanted attention.
In Croydon we've had many bomb scares over the years (I work very close to the huge home office building), none of which ever get reported in our useless local rags. They seem to be written by people in Grimsby or somewhere.
 
There was a Bomb beak! i dont think they blow everything up thats suspicious if they did bombs would be going off left, right and centre. ive heard rumours but only rumours there has been six small bombs in manchester since christmas, the source is reliable but i still find it hard to believe.

Im just curious to know who the press ask before they print a story?? they must be told by someone what can go in and what can't as IMHO this is a major even so close to the games.
 
How do you know there was a bomb in the car Mr C?
Click to expand...
This wouldn't be the first time they've blown up some poor drunk's abandoned car, just to make sure. Manchester City Centre is a super sensitive place, for sure.

The trouble is, like you say Mr C., if they don't report it, how do you know? Everything becomes rumour. Which has to be worse.
 
Im just curious to know who the press ask before they print a story?? they must be told by someone what can go in and what can't
Click to expand...
As far as I know the good old fashioned, `D Notice is still alive and well. A story gets one of them slapped on and that's it `Officially Secret!'
 
Speaking from personal experience, a number of years back I used to live on Palatine Road in West Didsbury, Manchester. The police had sealed off a whole section of the road beacsue of a bomb scare (suspect package left beside a post box on Palatine Road.) I had to make a considerable detour in order to get into the house that I was living in. (The police barrier started just the other side of my front door. Any further and I wouldn't have been able to get back in.)

Anyhow, I went into the house and called a friend. I must have been on the phone for some time when I heard an extremely loud bang. I rushed outside to see what was happening (stupid really, but I'm only human ;) ), and looking towards the postbox I could see a bomb disposal robot that had presumably just destroyed the package, and looking the other way I discovered that the police barrier had been moved a furthe 50-100 yards further away. (It would have been nice for someone to have let us know.) The police at the barrier then told me, in extremely blunt terms, to return to the safety of my house.

As far as I'm aware, this was probably a false alarm (probably someone had naively thought that you could post a parcel, that was too big to fit through the slot of a letter pox, by just leaving it next to the box.)

I did look for any report of this event on the national and local news, but failed to find anything. I suspect that the press may regard this sort of thing (unless they have someone on the spot filming the controlled explosion) as a bit of a non-story. (Particularly when they can show a story about a roller-skating parrot. ;) )
 
When I lived in Manchester, I once found a large steel box wrapped in bin liners, wedged behind a bin by the escalators which ran up to the University precinct.

I told a security guard who took the sensible precaution of picking it up and shaking it violently. Fortunately, it turned out to be exactly what it seemed; an inexplicable large steel box, wrapped in bin liners.
 
I heard a story (UL?) that Meadowhall gets something like two bomb threats every month :eek!!!!:

There was a bomb scare at Huddersfield uni a while back, while I was in my first year. Someone threatened to blow up the Canalside West building, where I, inconveniently, had lectures at the time. Did they cancel relatively unimportant first year leactures?

Nope. They searched our bags. Well, they didn't so much search, as open them and have a quick peek in them. A few of my classmates had some, shall we say, not too legal substances in there which weren't found, presumably semtex would be just as easy to smuggle in.
 
I worked in Manchester in the late 80's early 90's, when there were a series of bomb attacks in one day. Despite the fact that the Manchester Education office was next to the courts (a fairly obvious target) and was a glass walled office block, our bosses refused to evacuate the building until the police came in and made them. They were more concerned that we they might lose a few hours work than that we'd get shredded by the windows coming in. As I was the first aider for our office, I was very relieved when the uber-bosses finally relented, having previously told the union reps that our requests to leave were basically skiving!
 
We used to get the odd bomb threat when I was at school, and instead of just evacuating the school, the nuns would make us search for the bombs. :hmph:
 
Remember the whole point of planting these bombs ,whether they go off or not , is to terrorise the general populace . If the public don't know about it they won't be terrified and the terrorists will have lost that particular battle . It is not in the interest of the public to tell them , the police and military must have an agreement with the press not to release this sort of information .
 
Looks like someone is finally taking old maggie's words seriously, about denying terrorists "the oxygen of publicity".
 
rynner said:
Looks like someone is finally taking old maggie's words seriously, about denying terrorists "the oxygen of publicity".
Click to expand...

Probably one of the only sensible things the old harpy ever said.
 
Bomb scares in London are quite common, but you get used to it - sort of. As long as you don't dwell on the fact that, if the threat has any substance, someone somewhere is trying to kill you.
 
knowing Manchester, it could be anyone from Moss Side drug gangs to Kurdish seperatists. Or even a WW2 bomb.
 
Just remembered a press supression thing from last year . After Sept 11th there was a lot of alarm about the possibilty of a plane being flown into my friendly neighbourhood nuclear reactor, Hinkley Point . It was interesting that all pictures and film of the power station both on local and national news and in local and national papers only showed the now closed down A and B reactors and absolutely no sign of the new C reactor tower . Even the aerial film was cleverly cropped .
 
Long ago in my civil service days (a fairly Fortean tale in itself involving a vault of ancient legal records, a man terrified of Ouija boards, a poltergeist, a mysterious tunnel of unknown origin, 800 teabags and a copy of Take a Break) one of my many duties was to look for bombs, along with the equally disinterested security guard. Generally, we'd look up and down the basement corridor, then go back to work.

I can't help but recall the not inconsiderable lack of training in 'what to do with bombs' that we received.

At my current place of employment, we have a wonderful page of things to say to people who phone bomb threats in. Most of it is very sensible; it has places to write answers and everything. However, I feel that under the question "where are you calling from?" it was perhaps a little optimistic to add a section for 'name, address, telephone number'.
 
My Sister works for John Lewis and apparrently if they have a bomb scare the sales assistants (sorry partners) have to search for the bomb, patting the pockets on clothes and looking under shelving units etc :eek!!!!: :eek!!!!: :eek!!!!:
 
Hmmm. Sounds a very bad idea. The best thing is to just evacuate the building, possibly opening windows as you go (if you don't, then the blast is more likely to cause the windows to blow out, showering people outside with splinters of glass,) and call in the experts. They have a number of important qualities, the first is that they have done this kind of thing before, and the second, most important quality is that they aren't *you*. ;)
 
"where are you calling from?" it was perhaps a little optimistic to add a section for 'name, address, telephone number'.
Click to expand...

I heard a story about someone phoning up with a bomb threat and he gave his name and address. When the police showed up he admitted doing it and said he was bored. Don't know if it's an UL though
 
Hey Evilsprout, do you remember a few years back there was a big hoohaa about loads of bodybags being delivered at Meadowhall due to a bomb threat or something similar? I think that turned out to be a urban myth if memory serves but I remember everyone talking about it.
 
sounds a bit like one of the classic black helicoptor UL's : a friend of a friend works for Baltimore Steel, and he was awarded a contract by the US Govt to provide enough steel for 20,000 cattle carts.
 
spook32 said:
Hey Evilsprout, do you remember a few years back there was a big hoohaa about loads of bodybags being delivered at Meadowhall due to a bomb threat or something similar? I think that turned out to be a urban myth if memory serves but I remember everyone talking about it.
Click to expand...

Actually, now you come to mention it I do! I knew a few people at the time who worked there (I think we're probably talking 1998ish?), and they all told the story with a straight face, so it was obviously doing the rounds among Meadowhall workers.

Bet that was great for morale.
 
I hope everything goes well for the games and that the Australians dont kill them by winning everything insight:D

Bit sad really. Whenever there is a big international event I find myself hoping no terrorism happens. I am sure the thought crosses many minds when it shouldn't. That War Of The Worlds show with actors, huge screens, lasers and Hawkwind looks like fun.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top