By Phil Skippon
This might seem an odd argument to be making. After all, a bomb has just been discovered on a plane in Derby, designed to be brought down over a city and presumably kill hundreds of people. It may seem stupid to say that the threat is exaggerated, but I would say that this is the perfect time to evaluate our security situation and say that we’re more frightened than the threat level justifies.
Since that bomb was discovered, printer toner imports from Yemen and Somalia have been banned. This may seem like a sensible reaction – clamping down on the threat decisively. But this is being paranoid. Assuming that every other toner cartridge coming in from Yemen and Somalia is a bomb is a drastic overestimation of a terrorist group.
And it’s not just aeroplanes. Public transport these days is full of notices about unattended packages. Train stations have regular announcements informing passengers that unattended packages will be removed and destroyed by the Security Services. Yes, it’s amusing to imagine MI5 agents in suits and shades surrounding a bag, pouring bullets into some poor fool’s underwear, but the suspicion behind it is worrying. On a recent Manchester – York train, the conductor found a bag by the door. Sensible man, he asked the owner to pick it up and put it in a luggage rack, where it wouldn’t arouse suspicion. So all that fear of unattended packages is useless.
The truth is that Al-Qaeda have been ineffective for the past 5 years. The sum total of their achievements on British and US soil amounts to one lightly toasted airport, some jokes about Glasgow and 3 hour boarding queues at airports. And they’ve put a dent in the Yemeni printer toner export business. Our way of life shall never recover.
The price of freedom is constant vigilance, no one is saying it’s not. However, what the Derby bomb shows is that the Security Services are on top of the threat. After all, they found it, no harm done. Every story about terrorism for the last 5 years has been about how they have been foiled, which suggests that the threat is actually rather small. But we’re still scared stiff of unattended packages on trains and printer ink cartridges on planes. Scared stiff of a threat that simply put, is small and manageable. And that is paranoia.