Hmm.
Train passengers face routine airline-style bag checks and body searches as part of a new counter-terror crackdown announced by Gordon Brown.
So, er, has anyone done the cost benefit analysis?
This could include screening luggage at major stations like London King’s Cross or Manchester Piccadilly using mobile checking devices that can be moved around the country.
And this will achieve what? Imagine that there are terrorists, primed and ready to bomb. So we set up the screening systems and start screening people coming into a particular station. Our bombers are therefore not going to use that station on that day, are they? The only way we could keep them off the railways is to screen all stations all the time: and no one at all things that that is going to be anywhere near cost effective. Remember that this would, from the evidence of the only bombing actually on trains in memory, that this would also have to include each and every London Underground station. And, err, every bus stop.
I can’t see the value of this at all, other than in the sense of something being seen to be done, however wasteful and futile that something is.
Glasgow Airport is cited: what, we stop cars arriving at the airport now?
It is currently unclear who will bear the costs of any security improvements.
That’s easy. The general public in huge delays. Time equals money, you know?
9 responses so far ↓
1 dearieme // Nov 15, 2007 at 10:16 am
Gives us more time for recycling, though. Just take your mixed rubbish to the railway station, and sort it while you wait.
2 knirirr // Nov 15, 2007 at 10:27 am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theatre
3 john b // Nov 15, 2007 at 11:07 am
If you read the whole speech, it’s clear that he’s referring to Glasgow-style concrete blocks to keep burning vehicles out of major stations, combined with stepping up the dogs-and-metal-detectors searches that already sometimes occur at stations. The luggage x-raying is entirely the Telegraph’s invention.
4 Bob B // Nov 15, 2007 at 12:06 pm
“It is currently unclear who will bear the costs of any security improvements.”
Why should the potential victims pay? The standard recommendation in other contexts is to apply the “polluter pays principle.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polluter_pays_principle
5 JuliaM // Nov 15, 2007 at 12:37 pm
“If you read the whole speech, it’s clear that he’s referring to Glasgow-style concrete blocks to keep burning vehicles out of major stations…”
Given that the normal passenger-use airport terminal doors stopped two tons of flaming Jeep right there, I hardly think it’s needed.
“I can’t see the value of this at all, other than in the sense of something being seen to be done, however wasteful and futile that something is.”
Got it in one!
6 JuliaM // Nov 15, 2007 at 1:14 pm
“If you read the whole speech, it’s clear that he’s referring to Glasgow-style concrete blocks to keep burning vehicles out of major stations…”
And yet, two tons of flaming Jeep were stopped dead by the normal passenger-entrance doors, so hardly needed, I’d say.
“I can’t see the value of this at all, other than in the sense of something being seen to be done, however wasteful and futile that something is.”
Yep, got it in one!
7 Zorro // Nov 15, 2007 at 4:15 pm
“I can’t see the value of this at all, other than in the sense of something being seen to be done, however wasteful and futile that something is.”
You are joking aren’t you? You don’t seriously expect there to be A POINT to a labour policy do you?
8 Bob B // Nov 15, 2007 at 10:48 pm
A sign of the times:
“A man who had gone into a diabetic coma on a bus in Leeds was shot twice with a Taser gun by police who feared he may have been a security threat.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/7096456.stm
9 Agammamon // Nov 16, 2007 at 4:23 am
I’m confused, didn’t you guys go through 60 odd years of IRA terrorism? Bomb throwing on a semi-regulary basis?
Only now, in (late) response to a couple of Islamic terrorist train attacks the implement this stuff – when it wasn’t neccessary before?
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