(no subject)
Sorting out my ID stuff and clean clothes for Buck House tomorrow. Of the original five who applied from our class, one has dropped out (the famous Most Annoying Person) and two have been dropped because their security screening didn't clear in time. The security screening was surprisingly thorough, and although this is probably because they are afraid of journalists rather than mad bombers, Recent Events can't have helped.
Of today's goings-on, it seemed a bit odd that the detonators went off and not the actual explosives, since, as The Brother pointed out, the detonator is usually the weakest point in any infernal device. Plenty of bombs don't go off because the detonator fails, but if the detonator goes off, the explosive usually works. He also suggested that perhaps the whole thing was a stunt devised by one of the annoying tabloids that spent most of last year trying to get their undercover journalists jobs at Buckingham Palace so that they could then publish stories about how porous their security was, or smuggling dummy bombs into Heathrow so they could do the same there. There doesn't seem to be any real way of stopping people taking anything they want onto buses and tube trains, since the numbers of people using them in the rush hour are so high that any bottleneck would seize up the whole system. Apart from anything else, airport-style security would be difficult, because people carry all sorts of things onto buses, rather than just carry-on type luggage. The return of conductors on buses might help, though.
Of today's goings-on, it seemed a bit odd that the detonators went off and not the actual explosives, since, as The Brother pointed out, the detonator is usually the weakest point in any infernal device. Plenty of bombs don't go off because the detonator fails, but if the detonator goes off, the explosive usually works. He also suggested that perhaps the whole thing was a stunt devised by one of the annoying tabloids that spent most of last year trying to get their undercover journalists jobs at Buckingham Palace so that they could then publish stories about how porous their security was, or smuggling dummy bombs into Heathrow so they could do the same there. There doesn't seem to be any real way of stopping people taking anything they want onto buses and tube trains, since the numbers of people using them in the rush hour are so high that any bottleneck would seize up the whole system. Apart from anything else, airport-style security would be difficult, because people carry all sorts of things onto buses, rather than just carry-on type luggage. The return of conductors on buses might help, though.