The old mantra 'terrorist threat' has been wheeled out so many times to justify more and more oppressive measures by New Labour that it lost its impact a long time ago. Indeed many of us doubted the seriousness of the threat from the start. Apart from the odd nutter or two the threat has never been as severe as that from the IRA a few years ago, and we lived in a state of relative freedom then in spite of them.
Then, over Christmas, the authorities wheel out a nutty Nigerian who used a syringe on a plane to make something on his leg go 'pop' and spout a bit of smoke. There you are, no doubt they will now ratchet up airport security even more, and install even more CCTV cameras in Kendal and Kirkby Lonsdale.
But last time I flew I had a bottle of over-sized shampoo confiscated because they thought I was going to use it as a terrorist weapon. Rub suds in the pilot's eyes perhaps causing the plane to crash? So how did nutty Nigerian chap get a syringe and a thing that goes 'pop' and makes smoke through all that hi-tech security? Perhaps it was actually time for the state to show us that there is a threat and that removing our freedoms and liberties is justified, but they didn't want to actually kill anyone in the process, not at Christmas.
The other thing that concerned me was that this nutty chap has a mechanical engineering degree from University College London. Now I don't expect they teach bomb making at UCL, but what happened to education, education, education under New Labour if that is the best an engineering graduate can do? On top of that his family are very wealthy it seems, so he could have afforded the best ingredients.
I think it's all very odd.
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