Janice Turner: Fortress Britain, a grotesque thought
We face overzealous security in our daily lives, and are governed by a Prime Minister in a flap
Janice Turner
Saturday 17 November 2007
The Times
These days it seems simple-minded to get excited by travel. My thrill at a jaunt to New York, sans kids, sans duties, to see friends, to thrash that hilarious 48p dollar - and by absurd good fortune not, for once, penned in cattle class - ended at the revolving doors of Terminal 4.
How plain fun-sucking, how utterly boring is the security procedure that grows more ornate with every foiled plot. Yes, I packed my bags myself.
Nope, no one could have tampered with them. (Does anyone answer otherwise? What happens if they do?) The shuffling 45 minutes, even in “Fast Track”, where you divest yourself of coat, belt, wobble on one leg unzipping boots (thanks, Richard Reid), get fleetingly felt up, worry they will confiscate your deadly eyebrow tweezers again, but they only take your bottle of water (thanks, allegedly, Rashid Rauf et al) within sight of WHSmith on the air-side, where you will immediately buy another...
Like high-security prison inmates we submit in silence, avoid eye contact, fear some misjudged funny will land us in a private suite where rubber gloves will be snapped on and our holiday cancelled. Of course, it's a whole lot better than being blown up, and as the plane swung landward from the Eastern Seaboard, I was grateful I'd minimised my chances of being aboard a passenger missile.
But how much of this are we prepared to endure in the name of forestalling terror? This week the Prime Minister announced that, in effect, Britain is to become one colossal Terminal 4: baggage checks at the 250 busiest railway stations, searches at cinemas, souped-up security at schools... Is this the future, lining up to unzip your bag at each store as you Christmas shop on Oxford Street? ...
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