Vincent McAviney: UK correspondent on a 17-year-old being officially charged after the Southport stabbings

A 17-year-old boy has been charged with three counts of murder following the deadly stabbing attack in Southport.

The attacker has been charged with three counts of murder and 10 attempted murders and the possession of a blade.

He's expected to appear at Liverpool City Magistrates Court on Thursday.

UK correspondent Vincent McAviney says this is the start of a long legal process for this case.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
But let's go to the UK and our correspondent today
is Vincent Megavinny. Hello, Vincent, good afternoon. What happened today
in the case of the seventeen year old charged with
murder of three Southport girls at the Taylor Swift Dad's party.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Yeah, well, this tragic incident up in the north west
of England are still really being felt in the community
and around the country. Three girls, as you mentioned BB
King six, LC dot stand Come seven and nine year
old Alice da Silva died after that ninth attack at
a Taylor Swift themed event in Southport that was at

(00:37):
the hands allegedly of a seventeen year old who has
now been charged. Were not able to release his name yet,
but he has been charged with murder of the three
girls and attempted murder of ten others. We know that
eight other children and two adults who are at the
event were injured, some still believed to be in a
critical condition in hospital and have been undergoing surgeries. Of

(01:00):
other girls who were also at that class as survived,
obviously dealing with the trauma of what they witnessed. But
this is the start of a long legal process. The
police still saying this is not an act of terrorism.
There is no link, as has been falsely claimed on
social media to any Islamist attack, and we still don't
have any idea of a motive for this crime. But

(01:23):
the legal process now starting.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Because yesterday we were reporting on the fact that at
a vigil of course for the Girl's trouble actually burst out,
and then a nearer mass again trouble burst out, and
this was because of people who had been misinformed through
social media by bad actors somewhere. Now we hear even
more trouble outside Downing Street.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, that's right. Last night there were huge skirmishes between
police and the far right edl English Defense League movement.
They're sort of bad actors online of trying to co
opt this and tie it into sort of the immigration
debate and the small boats that crossed the channel, and
so you had hundreds of them turning up last night
in claiming that they were there to quote protect their children,

(02:06):
that our civil disorder ensued. They were violent towards police,
they fired flares, had a statue of Winston Churchill and
into Downing Street, and one was even spotted giving a
Nazi salute outside Downing Street. So one hundred have been
arrested and the starting to face charges now of disorderly
conduct in the public area, violence towards police officers as well.

(02:30):
So pretty ugly scenes last night, stirred up by the
likes of the EDL Tom Robinson, but also some claiming
by Nigel Farage as well, who took instead of the
Commons as he is now an MP, to ask questions
of Home Office ministers about what was going on in
the town, took to social media to sort of stir
up conspiracy theory, saying that, you know, he felt something

(02:50):
was being hidden and sort of alleging that there was
more going on with this, but not sort of saying
what he thought that was. So some ugly scenes playing
out after this horrible incident.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yes, absolutely, Even though you know this story after story
showing the links and showing the networks and showing the
teen accounts and social media that we're responsible for sewing
the disinformation, people keep on believing it. What's that about?

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Well, there's no cure for stupidity, is there.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
As we said, now, how's your economy and what's going
to happen to interest rate and will they be cut?

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Well, our economy is doing pretty well compared to a
couple of years ago. We've now got interest We've now
got inflation down at two percent from a high of
over eleven percent, but our interest rates are still at
a sixteen year high, stuck up at five point two
five percent, and the Bank of England has consistently delayed.
Inflation had come down to that two percent target by

(03:47):
the time two months ago of the last rates decision,
but that decision now this today, the monthly decision, there's
about a sixty percent chance of them being brought down,
it's thought by zero point to five basis points to
five percent, which would be a massive relief to people
here struggling with the highest cost of living pressures and
the highest tax burden since the Second World War. So

(04:08):
many homeowners who have mortgages across the country hoping that
we're starting now to see a return not quite of course,
to the historic lows we had back in the day
after the financial crash, of down atzero point two five percent,
but hopefully at least on their way back down to
a more manageable route. Now that we have a government
coming in that is promising to be fiscally disciplined, that

(04:31):
might after the sort of disaster of Liz Trust's time
which caused this massive spike in inflation rates, in interest
rates might start. There's on a path to recovery, okay.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
And I guess you can take your mind off at
with the Olympics. I never knew that England was so
good at swimming.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yeah, well, I mean this is all down to John Major,
who was our Prime minister in the nineteen nineties. The
UK went at or TEAMGB went to the Atlanta Games
and only came back with one gold and he thought,
for a country that's the world's fifth biggest economy, this
isn't good enough. So he had set up our national
lottery and he decided then that the funding for our

(05:09):
athletes would in part come from the national lottery system
and that has led to a huge boom in sports
funding across the country, of course, building up to twenty
twelve when we hosted the Games, and the UK you know,
getting into consistently the sort of top five of the
medals table. And that is the aim again this year
is to have fifty to seventy gold medals and that's

(05:32):
because of that legacy funding that started then and has
gone right through.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
Well we've got one bad hy We're small. Thank you
so much, Vincent, thanks.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
For more from Hither duplessy Alan Drive.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
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