July 2005, this site:

A very strange story, this one. The centre of Birmingham – almost 20,000 people – evacuated for a night due to a ‘real and very credible threat’. So what was this threat?

July 2006, BBC News site:

Part of the centre of Shrewsbury has been sealed off by police after what they describe as a “serious incident”. West Mercia Police have not yet released any details about the incident but they have said they expect the area to be closed for most of Sunday.

I don’t know if anything similar’s happened in between these two times, but it seems odd to be sealing off town centres and evacuating people without ever releasing details of why. I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but clearly something is going on and we’re not being told what. In the latter case, we were told by the West Midlands Chief Constable that “the people of Birmingham were in danger last night”, but never told why.

Are these two incidents connected? I have no idea. I do know that towns (including Birmingham) have updated evacuation plans. Is that connected to any of this? Or this is all just co-incidental, or even relatively normal?

I have no idea what’s going on with these events, and it doesn’t look like anyone’s going to be telling the public any time soon. So I guess the key question has to be: Why not? I’m not sure we’ll ever know.