Changing world

morstar

Just chewing the fat really!

Politics of fear or necessary security. There has just been a near miss that will lead to yet further tightening of security for travel. Each time something nearly happens we face more and more layers of security. At what point have we lost our way of life?

Globalisation, is it going to reverse itself? Cuts everywhere will encourage protectionist policies, that is human nature. Also, there is no longer anything like the price advantage there used to be importing from China. Opportunities for domestic manufacturing should be rife but there are no skilled workers left anymore.

Alcohol, is it worse than Heroin?

Kendal Black Drop

morstar wrote:

Alcohol, is it worse than Heroin?

I would rephrase that as -

Heroin, is it better than Alcohol?

daviesee

Alcohol v Heroin -

Alcohol does more damage but surely that is down to pure number of users. Can you imagine the state of the Country if the same numbers of drinkers were doing heroin?

Alcohol is in the main consumed in moderation. Can you consume heroin in moderation?

Health agencies are following the blueprint of tobacco. Expect more reports in an effort to make alcohol consumption socially unacceptable.

morstar

Is it possible to make alcohol socially unacceptable? Only quite recently the thinking was we need a more cafe culture of casual alcohol consumption rather than a binge drinking one. I think a lot of binge drinking stems from our more hectic lifestyles than our continental cousins. Work harder, play harder.
Unless we change our whole culture, I don't see us changing one facet in isolation.

ShutUpLegs

Society, there is no such thing as society

rick_chasey

Just chewing the fat really!

Politics of fear or necessary security. There has just been a near miss that will lead to yet further tightening of security for travel. Each time something nearly happens we face more and more layers of security. At what point have we lost our way of life?

Surely you never lose your way of life - because however you are living it is the aforementioned 'way'.
In all honesty - specifically with the airport security stuff - I do question how much value some of the airport procedures add. The secretary at work claims with some sincerity to have accidently taken a knife through in hand luggage (long story) out of the UK and back. Making me take my entirely leather shoes seems a little much too.

Globalisation, is it going to reverse itself? Cuts everywhere will encourage protectionist policies, that is human nature. Also, there is no longer anything like the price advantage there used to be importing from China. Opportunities for domestic manufacturing should be rife but there are no skilled workers left anymore

Why would globalisation reverse? If anything, protectionist economic policies point to an extremely globalised economy - such that nations feel the threat of the rest of the globe strongly enough to use protectionist economic policies. Either way, I find it very hard to see proper protectionist policies come into force. The sheer weight of evidence suggests that protectionism on a wide scale, especially for the more developed nations, is counter-productive. That's why everyone's so keen for it not to really happen and keeping a close eye on any currency wars.

Why is there no advantage for importing from China? It's still an awful lot cheaper to produce a lot of stuff there. I can't see how that balance has changed at all. And with regard to having 'skilled workers' to do stuff - up to a point, and it goes most of the way - if there's a demand for skilled workers, eventually, said skilled workers will appear to fill the demand.


And with the alcohol thing - the headlines are a little misleading. The study's taking a look at the wider costs, socially, of consuming various substances on their own merit (or should that be lack of merit). As far as I am concerned - as the current bloody drug war in Mexico shows - that the criminalisation of various drugs clearly fails - in the sense that it doesn't stop people using them, but it instead forces them into criminality and all that is associated with that (murder, violence, crime etc). It's time to take a very tough hard, and above all ,open minded look at all the possible ways to deal with drugs. What this particular study shows, and indeed the headlines draw attention to, is that there are substances which are banned which have comparably same or even less bad effects on society than some substances that don't - one substance that I'd imagine literally everyone on this forum has experienced, either first or second hand. Is that not reason enough to re-think policy towards drugs? There needs to be a new approach to drugs - since this current one is failing an awful lot of people.

finchy

Rick Chasey wrote:

In all honesty - specifically with the airport security stuff - I do question how much value some of the airport procedures add. The secretary at work claims with some sincerity to have accidently taken a knife through in hand luggage (long story) out of the UK and back.

It's a useful deterrent. One bomb on an aeroplane could kill hundreds of people, it would probably be impossible to do that much damage by bombing any other target. From the security point of view, aeroplanes are the number one priority for protection, and the harder they make it for people to attack them the better.

How big was the secretary's knife and could it have been mistaken for something else?

Lancslad

Ah you need to read
Daemon by Daniel Suarez then Freedom by Daniel Suarez

Cracking read and really makes you think about the way our society is set up for big business.

Anyway so they'll ban printer cartridges but where do they stop? when every single item has to be scanned? We are quickly going to be prisoners in our own countries and goverments like nothing more than an excuse to keep the population under control. I dont want to be on a plane that blows up anymore than the next person but I also dont want to spend 4hrs in an airport before getting on a plane, there has to be balance.

finchy

I'd be quite happy to spend 4 hours in an airport if it meant less chance of a bomb on the plane. You could always take a book.

If the whole thing is just a way to keep us under control, then how come checks before taking less vulnerable forms of transport (boats, international trains) are so much less stringent? It's not as if the aeroplane is the only way to leave a country.

rick_chasey

johnfinch wrote:

I'd be quite happy to spend 4 hours in an airport if it meant less chance of a bomb on the plane. You could always take a book.

If the whole thing is just a way to keep us under control, then how come checks before taking less vulnerable forms of transport (boats, international trains) are so much less stringent? It's not as if the aeroplane is the only way to leave a country.

I never said it's a control thing - I tend to think that a fair proportion of the measures are more about the perception that it is helping prevent an attack rather than it actually helping prevent one.

The liquid thing for example is massively irritating - I buy a bottle of water in the airport, and yet i can't take it through security?!

I'm more likely to die by choking on my pillow.

finchy

Rick Chasey wrote:

johnfinch wrote:

I'd be quite happy to spend 4 hours in an airport if it meant less chance of a bomb on the plane. You could always take a book.

If the whole thing is just a way to keep us under control, then how come checks before taking less vulnerable forms of transport (boats, international trains) are so much less stringent? It's not as if the aeroplane is the only way to leave a country.

I never said it's a control thing - I tend to think that a fair proportion of the measures are more about the perception that it is helping prevent an attack rather than it actually helping prevent one.

The liquid thing for example is massively irritating - I buy a bottle of water in the airport, and yet i can't take it through security?!

I'm more likely to die by choking on my pillow.

I was replying to lancslad, not to you, about the control thing.

You're right about the water, that is silly. Surely some sort of compromise is possible, such as providing water coolers before security and then being allowed to buy water to take on the plane once you've gone through?

Cressers

It's a case of 'boiling the frog slowly'. small but agglomerating changes enforced upon us until we realise that the temperature has changed...

daviesee

johnfinch wrote:

You're right about the water, that is silly. Surely some sort of compromise is possible, such as providing water coolers before security and then being allowed to buy water to take on the plane once you've gone through?

Any liquids bought after going through security can be taken onto the plane. At least they have been on all flights I have taken up to September this year. Duty Free would die on it's feet otherwise but I am sure the airlines would love it if you had to buy their water at inflated prices..

Mr Smooth

I always take a bomb on the plane with me. I feel much safer. What are the chances of there being two bombs on one plane?

neiltb

The last # of trips I have made, real duty free has been impossible to get. International from toronto to heathrow to glasgow. Real duty free in toronto, no sir, you have a connection in London, you can't have it. In London the duty free was the same price as tesco.

As said, we need a proper balance, internal US flights are the case in point, got your drivers liscence sir, on you go. It's still like taking the bus ffs, can anyone remember where osama got his planes for 9-11. Want to get in or out of the US or live anywhere else and it's rubber gloves time.

tyk3

johnfinch wrote:

It's a useful deterrent. One bomb on an aeroplane could kill hundreds of people, it would probably be impossible to do that much damage by bombing any other target.

Rubbish.

The Madrid train bombs killed 191 people. A You could expect a similar death toll from blowing up an intercity train on it's way into London. All the bombers had to do was leave explosive filled suitcases on the luggage racks of the train. There are no baggage searches on trains, and no-one checks that passengers take their luggage with them when they leave. If I were a terrorist looking to cause maximum harm for minimum effort, that's where I'd start.

Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people in the Oklahoma city attack by simply driving a truck up to a building and detonating his bomb. Trivially easy compared with sneaking explosives onto a plane

If you have access to explosives it is a staggering simple matter to cause huge casualties by attacking civilian targets. Everyone tends to freak out about air travel, but if there are suicidal terrorist in this country looking to kill people using bombs, I hope they concentrate their efforts on planes, because they are likely to continue to fail.

We've all seen how easily they can cause carnage when they go fora more vulnerable target.

Having said all that, I do think a lot of the security measures at airports are theater, in place more for the appearance of security than to actually achieve anything.

Personally, I think that the threat from terrorists is probably overstated. There are so many easy targets you would expect more successful attacks if the country was actually teeming with crazed jihadists.

finchy

Tyk 3- The Madrid and London train bombings were co-ordinated attacks. Madrid was 191 deaths following 10 explosions, London was 56 with 4 bombs. Imagine what the death toll would have been with 10 or 4 aeroplanes (let's say an average of 250 passengers each) being brought down, especially if the plane crashed in an inhabited area. That's why airports need better security than train stations.

I agree with you that this country isn't teeming with Jihadists, but I'd rather have decent airport security to increase the chances of preventing that tiny minority from getting devices on board an aeroplane.

neiltb

so concentrating efforts on planes where there already were security precautions inplace is OK but you are happy to get blown up on the train or a bus?

think of yourself for a change.

daviesee

neiltb wrote:

The last # of trips I have made, real duty free has been impossible to get. International from toronto to heathrow to glasgow. Real duty free in toronto, no sir, you have a connection in London, you can't have it. In London the duty free was the same price as tesco.

I don't understand the Customs problem with the connection part but I agree with the Tesco part.
However, you try getting Dalmore Gran Reserva at Tesco (or any other shop come to that) :evil:

ooermissus

Terrorism has its own customs - and hijacking or blowing up planes has long held a special allure. The first commercial plane brought down by a bomb was in the 1930s and there was an epidemic of hijacking in the 1970s. Other targets don't have the same allure - so it's not a wonder airports get special protection.

Rick Chasey wrote:

The liquid thing for example is massively irritating - I buy a bottle of water in the airport, and yet i can't take it through security? !I'm more likely to die by choking on my pillow.

Maybe - but it's easy to forget that we only have a liquid ban because of a plot to bring down 10 airlines using explosives to be smuggled on board in a lucozade bottle - a plot for which three men are now serving life sentences.

finchy

neiltb wrote:

so concentrating efforts on planes where there already were security precautions inplace is OK but you are happy to get blown up on the train or a bus?

think of yourself for a change.

Er, no. I don't want to be blown up anywhere.

My point was that planes are a more likely target because 1 bomb will kill far more people. They are also easier to police than any other form of transport because of the relatively low number of people travelling by plane. That is why security should concentrate on air travel.

ooermissus

johnfinch wrote:

My point was that planes are a more likely target because 1 bomb will kill far more people. They are also easier to police than any other form of transport because of the relatively low number of people travelling by plane. That is why security should concentrate on air travel.

Which is true, given current levels of threat, and for the UK. But there are plenty of cities in the world where airport-level security has penetrated deep into the fabric of urban life.

Belfast before the cease fire... The green zone in Baghdad... De facto green zones in dozens of cities like Cairo...

I'd guess that you can't get into a major hotel in a third of the capital cities in the world without passing through a scanner. Many chains now specify their hotels with stand off to protect from car (if not truck) bombs etc etc.

It could be a lot worse.

gavintc

ShutUpLegs wrote:

Society, there is no such thing as society

An interesting assertion that I have heard before. But, how do you explain the community influence on a group of people. A village in Italy behaves as a community significantly different to one in France or UK. They are simply people living in roughly the same sized village, but as a direct result of their combined experiences will act as a group in a different way. Multiply these villages to a large area and I propose that you have a society acting loosely but significantly different from another society. So, I contend that 'society' does explain how people interact with each other.

verylonglegs

johnfinch wrote:

neiltb wrote:

so concentrating efforts on planes where there already were security precautions inplace is OK but you are happy to get blown up on the train or a bus?

think of yourself for a change.

Er, no. I don't want to be blown up anywhere.

My point was that planes are a more likely target because 1 bomb will kill far more people. They are also easier to police than any other form of transport because of the relatively low number of people travelling by plane. That is why security should concentrate on air travel.

Air travel has traditionally been the main target but your point about it being due the number of potential deaths isn’t quite right, not from the terrorist point of view, as ooermissus alluded to it is because air travel is seen as the ultimate symbol of ‘western’ technological advancement and to successfully attack it is regarded as a major moral victory. It is why they persist with targeting planes rather than much easier targets such as a busy football stadium.