Naked Terror

I've been a bit distracted for the past few days - what with alleged terror plots, crap at work, trying to sort out my mortgage - hence the break in posts. This latest terror alert has everything this government loves - threats of mass murder, dastardly foreign villains and sterling work to foil it all by our brave boys in blue - and everything it needs to induce an atmosphere of near panic in order to justify its attempts to bring in repressive measures such as ID cards. Some of the 'security' measures brought in at airports border on the farcical - no hand luggage, essential items, including wallets(!), to be carried in transparent plastic bags, baby's milk has to be sampled by the passenger carrying it before they can board! Why don't they just ask everyone to fly naked? After all, they could be wearing explosive socks, or have their underpants soaked in a dealy toxin, which will be realeased as poison gas when combined with the methane from their farting on the flight. Apparently not even penciuls are allowed to be carried on board now - has an airliner ever been hijacked by someone holding a shapened pencil to the pilot's throat? Best of all, you can't takes books on as hand luggage! Quite right, too - you just can't trust those bloody intellectuals.

It never ceases to amaze me how such plots are always convenientally uncovered when the government's popularity is ebbing, or it is enduring a run of bad publicity. Not that I'm a conspiracy theorist, or owt... And that's the problem I always have with these 'plots' - they're usually incredibly elaborate and require the participation of huge numbers of highly organised individuals. When you look at the successful terror attacks which have taken place recently, they all tend to come down to very small, not terribly sophisticated, groups of fanatics, often not affiliated to any larger organisation.

I'm also always slightly cynical with regard to the so-called intelligence behind the breaking-up of these supposed plots, particularly after the Forest Gate incident when hundreds of police officers raided a house acting on 'very good' intelligence that it was a chemical bomb factory. The reality was that no evidence of such activities was uncovered and the worst 'terror' activities the two brothers living there (one of whom was shot) had been involved in was allegedly shouting abuse at soldiers on duty in London. I also recall the kind of 'evidence' which came out at a recent trial of several Muslim men for conspiracy to commit terrorist acts. It all seemed to consist of the kind of bollocks and bravado one hears down the pub - you know the sort of thing: discussing how easily you could blow up your local public toilets, or assassinate John Prescott by getting an HIV-positive bloke to whack off in his pork pies, that sort of thing. I'm not saying that there aren't terror conspiracies going on out there, and that we shouldn't all be vigilant, but there's a danger of blowing things way out of proportion. Ultimately, all alleged terror plots such as this latest business do, is allow Blair and his cronies to triumphantly crow about how they're right to try and curb our freedoms in the name of security, and all those bleeding heart liberals going on about 'civil liberties' are just out of date. But like I said, I don't believe in conspiracies...