Serious stabbing on UK Train

It’s important to stress how utterly shocking and absolutely unprecedented this attack is.

Thank you, Golden Girl.

Golden Girl beat me to it.

Whilst such attacks are thankfully rare it's still a good idea to remain vigilant and be aware of the risk.

So sorry for the victims and the awful feelings this leaves for all passengers.
This reminds me of the attack in France on the train a few years ago.

So for now, maybe we need to respect the raw emotion our English contributors are feeling.

I agree with everything Emma said. Yes, there’s crime in Britain. It would be truly amazing if there wasn’t. In general, is Britain a safe country to visit? Yes it is.

About 50,000 knife-related offences recorded in England and Wales over the past year

Those offences also include whether a knife was in someone's possession. The figures don't represent solely violent offences involving a knife. The majority of those numbers will relate to someone being found in possession of a knife or bladed instrument, typically during a stop and search and no act of violence or any other crime has been committed.

So whilst those numbers may appear concerning they need to be viewed in context.

I certainly appreciate Frank II posting this link.

It's terrible, but very unusual. It is unprecedented in so far as nobody on that train would have had the slightest expectation or fear of this happening to them. It came out of the blue. A mass stabbing on a British train is without precedent. I don't certainly don't recall anything like this happening before.

Thanks Frank II for advising people who may have been trying to travel yesterday (or today) on UK trains of this awful occurrence.

Of course what's worse is that his title should have read "stabbings," not "stabbing," as there are mutiple victims.

Thanks to Nigel, too, for reporting in a second thread the follow-on result today.

I'm not sure what exactly these 10,000 violent attacks on trains a year, there is a load of drilling down into those figures to do to know what that means, as such violent crime is massively rare.
In all my years I have never heard of anything of this magnitude happening.

Where I volunteer, we have policies in place for emergency situations, though no one expects them to ever happen. Hopefully this incident proves to be an isolated tragedy. Time will tell.

Sometimes citizens of a country who know the country and culture well don’t appreciate the comments from outsiders.

Ah I try not to be upset by that too much. I don't mind a bit of well reasoned opinion about the UK from foreigners personally. I like hearing from Mr E or Joe. Their posts always bring some colour. Tough topic to tackle sensibly here though.

respect the raw emotion our English contributors are feeling

I'm not sure I'm feeling any raw emotion as such. It trivialises the situation slightly for me to say I'm not English if you include me, but I'm compelled to say that. No offence taken.

I agree with jojo rabbit’s post, thank you Frank.

I don't think it makes sense to compare what happened on the train outside Peterborough with the 7/7 attacks. One was carried out by a lone severely mentally ill person and the other was a large, coordinated terrorist attack with religious motivations. Both were (thankfully) completely unprecedented. I think it might be best now if this thread becomes locked before we get more of this type of commentary.