Is there a bigger con than the 'security industry?'

Mrs John Murphy · Is there a bigger con than the 'security industry?'

Reading this story about how they want to introduce these scanners at £80,000 each. Now considering that it is a chance for a bunch of minimum wage goons to have a good leer is neither here not there. More to the point is that it seems that any 'scheme' no matter how wasteful can be justified if you claim that it is in the interests of 'security' and 'preventing terrorism'. While for example almost every other example of public spending has to be justified in terms of its value, the benefits in brings etc etc, it seems that saying 'security' gets you a green light to waste our money.

The reality is that most of these things are gimmicks and have no real benefit - they wouldn't have stopped 9/11 and they wouldn't have stopped Madrid or the July bombings in London.

It is very scary that an industry so invasive should also be so unaccountable.

grrr

The Government is a lot more scared of having NOT done security than doing it without cause.

The doc on Radio 4 last night about the Brighton bombing anniversary ended with Thatcher's speech to the conference ON THE SAME DAY and her talking about the importance of carrying on as normally as possible. For all of her faults that was a very important thing to do and say so quickly after an assassination attempt.

If the same thing happened now I am sure that the conference would be stopped, probably all of the other parties conferences would be cancelled and the PM of the day would not be seen in public for weeks.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n510n

Mrs John Murphy

The point is that if someone is going to blow themselves up then they will. Secondly, you are far more likely to die in a road accident, fire etc than as a result of terrorism but we don't invest anywhere near the same level of resources into preventing things that are more likely to kill us than in things that aren't.

The whole industry is a massive con of whipped up imagined fears of an impending Apocalypse - the government then accepts these fears as being real and throws money at the 'problem'.

grrr

I think the main issue is the Government fear of the Media.

One person is killed by a terrorist - big media enquiry 'how was this allowed to happen?'

100 people killed on the roads - no media interest at all.

SlowRower

What I found curious is that I've never been asked to remove my shoes going through airport security when travelling alone, but got nabbed earlier this year when going on hols with the family.

It was a great hoot all round, particularly at 5:30am with my back still so stiff I could barely bend down to undo my laces, but I did wonder how the security guys decide whose shoes they want to examine. Are men travelling with their wife and kids more or less likely to be a suicide bomber than a man in a suit travelling alone?

I would have thought the lone man would pose the bigger risk. After all, as a would-be bomber, to fake "low risk" appearance as a travelling businessman isn't that hard, but there aren't many people who would take their kids along in an elaborate charade to fool security and then blow them up in exchange for eternity in paradise.

My guess is that like all routine "risk management" measures, the airport security one soon degenerates to box-ticking and meeting quotas, with very little consideration given to the actual risks posed by events on the ground.