What price political correctness?

The policy is to check EVERYONE at Heathrow and other airports this morning on the back of this huge terror alert. Is this necessary? Limited security resources are spread thin and disruption is maximised. Thus there are associated financial and security risks with this policy. How necessary is this policy? At what scale does this policy becomes untenable?[still in the process of moving and only just got limited net connectivity installed, so apologies to all those I owe replies to from the past couple of weeks. will be back to normal in next couple of days]Edited by cavediver, : No reason given.

I'm just raising the issue for discussion. And Richard Reid was fairly noticable in his appearance! And of coure this is precisely how security works in normal situations. My state of dress has always dictated the probability of being stopped. My none-white friends and colleagues have always suffered far more scrutiny. It is all a case of perceived risk potential.

Normally I wouldn't go quite this far, but Reid (John Reid, our newish Home Secretary) has made some quite scary statements over the past couple of weeks...Edited by AdminPhat, : fixed quotes

Of course, but the numbers of such are tiny - the idea of a group acting in concert is hopefully fairly implausible, though of course this could change - and with *limited resources* do you equally target mothers, famililes, etc? The innocuous (i.e. not the shoebomber) white terrorist acting on the small scale is virtually unstoppable without sacrificing western infrastructure (as we are today)

It is all to do with perceived risk. With unlimited resources there would not be a problem. As someone who drove a white van around NI upon occasion I have seen it in action all before... I think we're pretty much there already[abe] and the entirely peaceful, law-abiding white van drivers of Omagh were alienated and thoroughly pissed off long agoEdited by cavediver, : No reason given.

Ever since their advert I've never dared travel by air without reading it first