Luton Airport Car Park Fire

[Vixen]

How can the driver be out on bail if he hasn't yet been charged? That is such a ridiculous statement. You should really stop playing at being a lawyer.

I'm not that familiar with how the police work in GB, but I'd wager that "arrested", in this case, doesn't mean "hauled off to the station in handcuffs", but rather, "required to come in immediately and answer some important questions". (That's assuming that the person in question was even the driver of the vehicle, which is not certain.) Having been questioned, if the police are satisfied that the person was just some luckless motorist whose car caught fire in a really bad location, they would release said person without charges, and without identifying them, because in that case their identity would be no one else's business.

In England you can be bailed without charge:

If you are either released on bail or under investigation, this means the police are not yet ready to make a charging decision on your case, but the investigation still remains active.

There are a number of potential reasons for pre-charge bail. It may be that there is, at the time, insufficient evidence to charge you.

Spicer Zeb

In this case, it has been done 'as a precaution'. The effect? As the information has been released to the press, the effect is to draw the public's attention to this man and away from Range Rover.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Dup...

 

[P.J. Denyer]

This is "How NASA's own pictures disprove the Moon Landing" level stuff... Tinfoil hats mandatory.

 

[Vixen]

I have made enquiries and can now confirm that the website page was in fact written by Andrew Hopkinson, chief fire officer for Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service.

That is not correct. The person concerned is someone called Rebecca Croft.

Rebecca Croft, communications manager for Bedfordshire county police, told the same to AFP in an October 12 email: "We can confirm the initial vehicle involved in the fire was a diesel car."

Daily Mirror

 

[Andy_Ross]

No attribution? Safely disregard.

It is attributed to the fire service. It's on their official website

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Still no examples of people converting old diesel land rovers to hybrids then?

Well?

 

[Andy_Ross]

It hasn't deceived anyone. It gave as little information as possible on the morning of 11 October when it could safely say without fear of contradiction that they 'believe' this, that and the other, 'subject to verification'. It didn't give the make or the model. It is only in recent years DVLA have started distinguishing mild hybrid diesels from diesel, so a hybrid is not precluded if that is how DVLA has classified it.

It was a diesel car, the fire service have confirmed it.

 

[Matthew Best]

That is not correct. The person concerned is someone called Rebecca Croft.

Daily Mirror

That's what they want you to think.

 

[Thermal]

Note how in picture 1

• the vehicle is on a slope going upwards.
• note the size and shape of the fire extinguisher to its right.
• Note how the vehicle fits in its lane.

Note how in picture 2

• the vehicle now appears to be on flat ground or even in a 'valley'
• the fire extinguisher to its left (back view on its right) is disproportionately large and the wrong shape.
• the vehicle is now too wide to fit in its lane. It straddles the centre white line!
• the bonnet/hood appears to be floating above the , er, bonnet.
• suddenly, the registration plate is readable! Quelle surprise!

I must say the sign saying to 'terminal' is a nice touch. Well faked, @andysoullinux. Fooled catsmate, the arbiter of all that is not drivel.

What the hell are you talking about? The car is in the same relative lane place, on the same slope (not that a tilted camera wouldn't easily alter that) and the extinguishers are the same?

 

[welshdean]

The car was around ten years old. It wasn't worth a quarter of that. And I'm not sure what you think infantilising a 30 year old man achieves. If he wants to spend his money on a decade-old prestige car that's his business. I'm sure he'd have preferred the petrol V8 if he could have afforded to fill it up.

Lol, I was getting 8 mile/gallon, sold mine and bought a , hybrid. Oooh lordy, I'd better be careful.
ffs.

 

[catsmate]

No attribution? Safely disregard.

Compared to your fabricated drivel?

 

[phiwum]

Oh dear, catsmate. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!

Have you taken the trouble to check your source, that the vehicle concerned is 'a rather elderly 2014 Range Rover Sport with around 84,000 miles on the clock. Given the most recent MoT showed a carbon dioxide emission of 194g/km it was not a hybrid. And the MoT also lists it as a diesel.'?

No? Oh dear.

The only photo that has been widely published in the press is the one supposedly taken from behind the vehicle (we are left to surmise thus, as it hasn't been officially confirmed this is the vehicle in question, but let's assume that this hind shot is an authentic still of a CCTV image as issued by Luton Airport Car Park).

The video claiming to have been taken from the front was uploaded onto X/Twitter by someone called @andysoullinux dated 12 October 01:00 possibly US time zone. The fire was on 10 October at circa 20:45. Not one news outlet has used this video or its image. Why? Because it cannot be authenticated.

'Andy' appears to be somewhat of an EV afficionado. 'Andy's' profile reads: ' EV owner, green stuff, DevOps, Linux
Octopus referral code, great for EV owners'.


Maybe 'Andy' felt sufficiently outraged by the suggestion the fire started in an lithium-ion car? Anyway, someone looked up the registration plate on this unauthenticated video as being 'E10 EFL' and looked up on DVLA to claim '2014 Range Rover Sport with around 84,000 miles on the clock. Given the most recent MoT showed a carbon dioxide emission of 194g/km it was not a hybrid. And the MoT also lists it as a diesel.'

Well, well, well, and catsmate has seized on this as being a factual confirmed truth.

Here is a pic of the front and the back of the vehicle concerned. What do you notice? This is a 'spot the difference' exercise.

[qimg]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/53314085486_0165dfd981_z.jpg[/qimg]front by Username Vixen, on Flickr

back - the picture circulated in the national press as 'Is this the car?'

[qimg]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/53314330133_289228d1ff_c.jpg[/qimg]back by Username Vixen, on Flickr

Front - the unauthenticated video - still as uploaded by 'Andy' the EV advocate.

Note how in picture 1

• the vehicle is on a slope going upwards.
• note the size and shape of the fire extinguisher to its right.
• Note how the vehicle fits in its lane.

Note how in picture 2

• the vehicle now appears to be on flat ground or even in a 'valley'
• the fire extinguisher to its left (back view on its right) is disproportionately large and the wrong shape.
• the vehicle is now too wide to fit in its lane. It straddles the centre white line!
• the bonnet/hood appears to be floating above the , er, bonnet.
• suddenly, the registration plate is readable! Quelle surprise!

I must say the sign saying to 'terminal' is a nice touch. Well faked, @andysoullinux. Fooled catsmate, the arbiter of all that is not drivel.

As a footnote re the emissions, strangely, Jaguar Land Rover were caught red handed fiddling this, with a device that could hide the true (bad) emissions rate, but that's another story.

Looks pretty damned similar to me. Your "differences" don't seem inconsistent. Different angles, different perspectives, and a hood that maybe appears to be ajar. Do you really think that Andy made the image from scratch and had to add a hood behind the smoke? Truly bizarre.

Mind you, I won't take either photo as the God's honest truth without some verification, but I don't find the second photo inconsistent with the first.

Of course, we're not all eagle eyes and Vixen is undoubtedly really good at this stuff...

ETA: Is it your opinion, Vixen, that this hybrid fan searched the database for a similar vehicle registered as a diesel ICE with a similar color and similar year and appropriately poor emissions rating so that he could fake a photo with that license plate? If so, he's quite dedicated, ain't he? Or perhaps he's on the Jaguar payroll.

 

[catsmate]

Oh dear, catsmate. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!
<Drivel snippage>.

Some of us are capable of doing our own research. You should try it sometime.


Despite your pathetic attempts at obfuscation and outright, lying, the initial vehicle in the fire was a diesel Range Rover, nearly a decade old and vastly less valuable than you claimed. Your childish conspiratorial rants fool no-one.

 

[catsmate]

What the hell are you talking about? The car is in the same relative lane place, on the same slope (not that a tilted camera wouldn't easily alter that) and the extinguishers are the same?

A question oft asked about conspiracy nuts.....

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I have made enquiries and can now confirm that the website page was in fact written by Andrew Hopkinson, chief fire officer for Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service.

So they've got to you too. That's upsetting. It's like invasion of the body snatchers around here.

 

[Steve]

Looks pretty damned similar to me. Your "differences" don't seem inconsistent. Different angles, different perspectives, and a hood that maybe appears to be ajar. Do you really think that Andy made the image from scratch and had to add a hood behind the smoke? Truly bizarre.

Mind you, I won't take either photo as the God's honest truth without some verification, but I don't find the second photo inconsistent with the first.

Of course, we're not all eagle eyes and Vixen is undoubtedly really good at this stuff...

Isn't it blazingly obvious by now that there are no lengths to which people on the internet, and relevant authorities and experts IRL, will go in order to trick Vixen into believing untrue things? But Vixen cannot be fooled! Oh no, Vixen sees through every trick, lie, and ruse due to her vast education in accountancy, statistics, psychology, and who knows what else that she hasn't told us about yet. If Vixen makes a statement on a topic you can count on it being properly researched, sourced, evidenced, linked and, most importantly, true beyond any shadow of doubt. So you have to believe that Andy did in fact create that image.

 

[Thermal]

Has it been proposed yet that this was a suicide bombing by the Range Rover? Has Al-Jagwa claimed credit yet?

 

[phiwum]

In England you can be bailed without charge:

Spicer Zeb

In this case, it has been done 'as a precaution'. The effect? As the information has been released to the press, the effect is to draw the public's attention to this man and away from Range Rover.

Once again, the very day that they announced the arrest, they also announced that the apparent cause was vehicle fault. Why do that if the point is to focus attention on the driver and not the vehicle?

It makes no damned sense.

 

[phiwum]

That is not correct. The person concerned is someone called Rebecca Croft.

Daily Mirror

Why is the communications manager for the police department putting out webpages for the fire brigade? I mean, it's possible she does double duty, but have you any evidence at all that this is the case?

Or did you just make it up?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

...

Note how in picture 1

• the vehicle is on a slope going upwards.
  
• note the size and shape of the fire extinguisher to its right.
  
• Note how the vehicle fits in its lane.
  

Note how in picture 2

• the vehicle now appears to be on flat ground or even in a 'valley'
  
• the fire extinguisher to its left (back view on its right) is disproportionately large and the wrong shape.
  
• the vehicle is now too wide to fit in its lane. It straddles the centre white line!
  
• the bonnet/hood appears to be floating above the , er, bonnet.
  
• suddenly, the registration plate is readable! Quelle surprise!
  

....

Your photoanalysis skills are astonishingly poor. Well, okay, I should know better than to be astonished, but they're risible.

Slope: you have no horizon to compare. You have no idea which way the floor slopes other than perhaps to note burning diesel was flowing to the car's left.

Extinguisher: looks fine to me on my phone. Maybe you could flesh out your objection a bit. Or maybe you can't.

Lane: that is not a white line. It's just the edge of a concrete slab. One-way traffic means the car has the whole broad lane to use, except the green lane to one side for pedestrians.