It would seem that the War On Global Footwear is over. The last two Thursdays have seen me going through LHR Terminal 1 without having to remove my shoes.

Presumably Al-Quaeda sent BAA a note, saying

Righteous Al-Quaeda Brethren in Jihadi Alliance under The Most Holy One to Western Materialistic Fascists, Greeting.

We promise no longer to attack your Western aggressor aviation industry by means of the bombs hidden in Shoes, honest we do. Therefore please call off the security shoe-removing behaviour which is causing us all to spend too long in Airports.

Yours in Faith
Osama

Update 26 Oct

War on Footwear back on, sadly. Presumably Al Queda were just on half term.

Oh, also LHR now have a War on Loading Your Own Tray.

Perhaps I'm just missing it — perhaps it's not a War on Terror, but a War on Catching Your Flight...

No, I'm sorry, I've spent too long fuming about this, so have to rant somewhat. Please excuse me...

Once again last night, coming home through LHR I was confronted by the sheer stupidity and theatrics of the security regime. In the last 6 months, LHR's security policy has moved from Occasionally, you will have your shoes checked to Randomly, you will need to put your shoes through the scanner to everyone will always have to have their shoes scanned.

Being a bolshie person who doesn't give in to implied orders, but waits to be explicitly told to do stuff, and even then challenges them, I enquired why this might be so. And the astounding answer was along the lines of:

Mumble, mumble, terrorism, mumble, mumble, current security climate, mumble, mumble, Shoebomber, mumble mumble.

Or, to put it another way, the best excuse they could come up with was a failed attempt nearly 6 years ago which hasn't been repeated since and has never happened under a British airport security regime, leaving two possible interpretations:

1. They're extremely slow on the uptake
2. It's all about being seen to be tough, without having any real impact on risk

The paranoid civil libertarian would naturally pick on the second explanation, as preparing the travelling public for any number of future restrictions (hell, why don't we all fly naked. And ban all fluids from aircraft). However, I prefer the third option of Random order from on high, which seemed like a good idea at the time but is so pointless even the staff can't work out (aka the Cockup theory). Well, it's better than the plain stupid the time taken to take off shoes lets them scan all the other things you now have to split out into separate trays theory.

I wouldn't even mind so much if the 'higher up' source was HMG, as then at least there'll have been some oversight from an intelligence source (what am I thinking?), or perhaps it's a BAA-wide policy. But no, it only applies to LHR.

How do I know? Because at EDI, another BAA establishment, they don't have a War on Footwear. Oh no. At EDI, they have a War on Belts. Yes, you have to take off your belt and put it through the scanner, while you walk through the metal detector (which I might add doesn't detect mobile phones as I discovered by accident on Monday), holding up your trews. Fair enough if it's a whacking great big thing with studs, clan crests and the like on it. But where can I hide a bomb in a modest thing with the smallest of buckles strictly needed to hold the thing together?

Or maybe they're just all scared in case I'm trying to smuggle on Holy Water... And don't get me started on that hoax.

Our MP, Anne PickingMoffat has historically been a thought-free, nodding dog for whatever hare-brained, knee jerk, reactionary guff the current government has dreamt up.

However, lately she's excelled herself in lack of thought, research, tact and insight when she conflated problems with the recent Scottish Ballot Paper with the principle of PR, and in doing so, compared the new First Minister to Hitler:

Did not proportional representation give Germany Adolf Hitler? To a lesser degree, we have been given the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond). Can that be a good example?
Source

To pick off the obvious problems:

1. There's the obvious kneejerk against Labour's current bête noir — sour grapes for losing power in Scotland, mixed with the fear resulting from her own constituency being part of that shift.
2. Then there's the simple fact that proportionality delivers an overall result that is closer to the will of the people. That it tends to upset entrenched parties that benefit from the current system obviously leads to even the more reasonable of her Hon Friends decrying it.
3. Next, we can note that previous AMS elections had very few spoiled papers. And even this time round, the new STV system had a remarkably low spoilage rate. So bitchy comments about this particular election's validity are either supremely premature and ill-informed, or are directed at another target.
4. Finally, Ms Moffat has shown herself prone to making logical fallacies. In this case, the Reductio ad Hitlerum, generically expressed as Adolf Hitler (or the Nazi party) supported X; therefore X must be evil/undesirable/bad, etc. As X can include building motorways, painting watercolors, owning dogs and vegetarianism, this is clearly a fallacy. In the online world, this is known as the Corollary to Godwin's Law: the citing of Hitler in an argument ends the argument, with the citer being deemed to have automatically lost.

It's one of the basic tools of any magician — control of the audience's attention. It's said that a good magician knows at all times where the audience is looking, and controls it. Misdirect the audience into looking at your right hand, while your left hand palms the coin. Or, if that fails, use the Glamourous Assistant as the focal point.

Today's lesson in stage magicianship comes from our old friends, the Labour Party. While you're all looking at the left hand waving goodbye (or the Glamourous Assistant), the right hand is busy palming £400m of my money and yours.

That 8% cost slippage (that's £2.4bn so far, or 76% of the original budget for those keeping count) came out in the Gateway Review, a month past the required deadline, and just happened to be published within a few minutes of the Dear Leader's Resignation Speech. Mind you, the only reason it came out at all was because the courts ordered to be published.

Yes, it seems that even in its death throes, the Blair Project cannot resist spinning for all its worth. It's another Good Day to Bury Bad News — an open goal so wide that we should have seen it coming a mile off.

Oh, we did.

Now we've all seen popstars using their fame for good causes, more often than is right just to ensure they get a wee bit of extra coverage. However, here's something a bit different. For one thing, it's not gone out in a blaze of publicity (I heard about it via the Bard of Barking group on last.fm). For another, only the people who perform the desired activity are rewarded.

But best of all, it gets people doing something concrete, that draws them into a greater level of involvement than just joining the latest fashion trend. Actually getting people engaged in the political process — marvellous.

Billy Bragg has agreed to do a private concert on Sunday April 1st in West Bromwich. There's one snag though. You have to help out with the anti-BNP day of action first.

So that'll be an hour delivering anti-fascist leaflets, then free food and drink and a private performance from the legend that is. Gotta be worth a look don't you think?

So here's the theory — a couple of senior labour bods, panic about the idea of El-Gordo as Dear Leader. In a desparate attempt to derail the expected coronation (and the gentlemen's likely permanent sinecure on the back benches), they launch a debate on the future of the Labour Party (my emphasis).

Now while this is as obvious a piece of astroturf as the gamut will allow, you'd think that if they had a modicum of sense, Haystack and Hairdo would ensure that the related website would do mad, off-the wall, distracting things like... ooh, debate ideas for the future of the Labour party.

Visiting it for the first (and likely only) time today, I discover this as the front page:

(Again, my highlighting)

Yes, it's Clarke, continuing to punt ID cards. And the forward looking bit (so far forward looking that even Tone hasn't suggested yet) is that the National Register should include a DNA database, presumably to support the Dear Leader's fondness for fishing expeditions.

Leaving aside that even this cowed Parliament balked at the idea of DNA inclusion, I'm just failing to see the 'future of the Labour Party' element here.

Anyone? Buehler? Anyone?

Nice to see that the Government has its priorities right:

If that’s not an Ass, I’m a horse

a gentle and respected friend got 28 days in chink for digging graves as an anti-war protest, and was therefore one of the 271 extra prisoners on Monday who took the prison population through the 80,000 ceiling...

So, a man who was due a six month sentence for downloading child porn (a crime, we are constantly being reminded, involving the actual abuse of actual children) is set free pending good behaviour. Another whose ‘crime’ is to protest against an illegal war - with particular regard to the killing of innocent children (the protest was on the feast of the holy innocents) goes down at huge cost to the taxpayer.

John Reid’s guidelines that were in the news yesterday were not new - they have been in place for quite some time. Reid’s letter was simply a reminder of a policy which was firmly in place on Monday - prison should be reserved for ’serious, repeat and violent offenders’.

[InMyHumbleEtc]

Who knows what kind of threat this serious offence might pose? Next they'll be serving Fairly Traded Tea, and then where would we be?