Thursday 20 January 2022

Stable Door Firmly Bolted...

...sadly, horse long since trampled people to death when it galloped to freedom.

Cambridge University has scrapped a programme that taught prisoners alongside students after the deadly 2019 Fishmonger’s Hall terrorist attack was carried out at one of its events.

You'd think the parents would be raging. Well, read on:

On Monday, Dave Merritt, Jack’s father (Ed: oh oh...), told the Guardian: "The Learning Together programme did a lot of good for the prisoners and the Cambridge University students who participated in it, and for that reason it is sad that the programme will not continue."

Apparently, to this bereaved virtue signaller, the problem was never asking tiny fish to potentially swim with Islamist sharks in the first place, but simply that the authorities were too naive and trusting about their selection of toothy predators... 

"It is regrettable that the university has never acknowledged its failings, either at the inquest or subsequently. The course leaders were idealistic, ambitious for the programme and naive about the risks that dangerous, high-risk, category A, Terrorist Act offenders such as Khan pose."

Aren't you just the same, then? Those are all pretty descriptive of your own views, as expressed here and elsewhere, aren't they?

"All the agencies in managing Khan – prison, probation, police, MI5 – regarded his involvement with Learning Together as a ‘protective factor’, in the absence of any evidence to support this. In the words of our barrister, Nick Armstrong of Matrix Chambers, it was if they were intoxicated by the ‘fairy dust Learning Together sprinkled over them’."

Yes Reader, Matrix Churchill - this is the law firm he's hired to excoriate the naivety of the university staff while blindly ignoring his own...

Mind you, the directors of the project don't elicit a great deal of sympathy, convinced as they are that they are the real victims here: 

In its response to the coroner, Learning Together said: “Drs Armstrong and Ludlow take this opportunity to reiterate that their personal and professional reflection, profound grief, and trauma is deep and ongoing following the tragedy of 29 November 2019.”

They aren't dead, though, as a result, are they? They are alive and kicking to broadcast their self-pity to the world. 

2 comments:

Rev. Spooner said...

Typo/brain fart there, Julia - not Matrix Churchill, which was an engineering company involved with arms to Iraq back in the day.

Good article regardless.

JuliaM said...

Mea culpa!