The problem with people is that when terrible things don’t happen they calm down. The Home Office is well aware of this unhelpful design flaw in voter citizens. When bombs stop detonating people naturally think that the problem is not so severe that a state of National Emergency needs to exist. When that happens they then start to say “Do we really need to allocate this vast budget to the Security Industrial Complex?” or worse still “Do we really want all these laws that dismantle our civil liberties and a free & democratic society merely to cope with this issue?”
So then, it is necessary to march around the village square banging the Terror Drum loud hard and scarily. Repeat as often as practical how much danger we are all in. Whence cometh the latest Terror PR wheeze from the Home Office.
The wallahs at the Home Office have devised a competition for architects designers planners and students to “… propose ways to prevent a vehicle-borne terrorist attack in a crowded place … It presents a great opportunity for students to make a significant contribution to protecting our country’s crowded places from terrorist attacks …” The competition is based on a fictional nightclub surrounded by ring roads that should be secure from unauthorised vehicles, while allowing the Filth and Ambulances in.
Target nighclub
Students can provide solutions to deal with 5 different styles of vehicle borne attack:
- Parked vehicle – a hostile vehicle carrying an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) is parked as close to the target as possible
- Encroachment – negotiating a vehicle through an incomplete line of physical barriers without the need for impact to gain closer proximity to the target
- Penetrative attack – using a vehicle as a ram in order to breach a physical perimeter and get as close to the target as possible
- Deception – using a ‘Trojan’ vehicle where its design features are changed in order to replicate that of a legitimate vehicle; or when an IED is surreptitiously planted on a legitimate vehicle
- Duress – against a legitimate driver to transport an IED onto premises, or duress against a guard to allow entry through a vehicle access control point.
Geeklawyer’s Whisky competition is for a spoof entry to mock this asinine little farce. The entry should either be a drawing for a design to prevent any one of the five attacks; alternatively it should be a test system to prevent any unauthorised vehicles gaining access to the nightclub.
The winning entry will be used as the entry of the Geeklawyer Blog Engineering Team and submitted to the RSA Panel and the Home Office Terrorist Panic TaskFarce, for the glory of the Motherland. In the full expectation that we win not only will the winner get his bottle of whisky but the £2000 competition prize will be divided equally between Geeklawyer and that winner, who may use that £50 in whatever way he/she sees fit.
(What a shame to see the august & noble RSA playing along with this social and political manipulation.)
geeklawyer you have got it wrong! it is essential to involve the creative powers of artists in devising ways to enable vehicle borne attacks. only then can advanced terrorist technique move forward. we should all consider it our public duty to work out new and ingenious ways we can bomb things. and perhaps even go out and do it. you are such an old stick-in-the-mud! get back to the tory conference.
You make sound like a bad thing to be a Tory? I can’t believe you mean that, really, I can’t.
This is trivial.
Assuming that the government has been telling us the truth about how ID cards will detect terrorists. The obvious solution, then, is to check drivers’ ID cards before letting them near the club. Simple!
To deal with the case of a non-terrorist acting under duress is equally simple. You simply define such a person as a terrorist, thus reducing it to a previously solved problem. Likewise duress against a security guard — the moment he acts under duress, define him as a terrorist, and so he’s not a security guard any more, and so no guard acted under duress.
Oh, wait, you wanted “a test system to prevent any unauthorised vehicles gaining access to the nightclub”. Just check the vehicles’ number plates to see if they’re over 18 or not.
Then write up your proposal formally and win a bottle of whisky. Not good stuff mind I know your tastes & I can’t run to /that/
I’m sorry, I can’t be arsed. Errm, I mean, I’m an ideas man, but one of those tiresome details people. Isn’t that what you lawyers are for?
Yea, but I’m a lazy lawyer.
I assure you, I’m lazier. How do I know this? I’m a sysadmin. Make of that what you will, either us highly-paid IT professionals never do a stroke of work, or I’ve haxX0red your flat and installed cameras to watch you slaving away over a hot writ.
Erm, you turn this camera off when I start watching pr0n, right?
Could you move about a foot to the right please, I’m intrigued to see exactly what Busty Brenda is doing with the chicken and your head’s in the way. Also your taste in music sucks, I’m uploading some replacements for you.
Geekwallah,
My suggestion is that all people approaching the nightclub must be naked. This will limit any explosives to internal devices.
All naked revelers must therefore present their bottoms for inspection by a robotic device, which will insert a special secure butt plug based on clamping technology. There will be a similar device for the ladies.
The nightclub will be secure and all will be well. In case of cold weather, guests could wear transparent suits.
That’s a good basic suggestion but what if this is a Northern night club? All the chicks would be fat & ugly; you know what Northerners are like. Frankly I’d rather have the suicide bomber. But the basic idea is good.
and all northerners go clubbing practically naked anyway. ah the ruin of an otherwise flawless plan. minor job in minjus awaits as consolation prize. and they are restricting the salary so you won’t be able to afford whisky either. not your day!
bonus point for a design that subtly incorporates a Goatse reference?
Well spotted that man. Gives “inner ring” a whole new unpleasant meaning.
Geeklawyer misses the point of their cunning ruse.
Entries to the competition are to be received and sorted on the basis of supposed ethnicity. Those of the wrong sort will be charged under s58 Terrorism Act 2000 and will be tried again and again and again until they are convicted.
Identical answers from the indigent population will be awarded the prize.
- I think this might work — using the fantastic i-d card itself as a defensive/offensive weapon. Groups of people could whip out their cards, and by co-ordinating reflections of the bright lights via a reflective strip in the card, they could dazzle any on-coming terrorist driver…the i-d card could have instructions printed on the back too, showing how to use it as an offensive weapon, jabbed into the eyes or vulnerable areas, run back and forth over the face in a sawing motion… (this martial art could be taught in schools). Finally, as terrorists alight from a vehicle, they could be met with a blizzard of thrown i-d cards, forcing them back…
What kind of government issues a liquor permit to a nightclub which people have to drive to?
An innovative one. I approve of this; it’s a PITA having to get a taxi home after an evening drinking which is why I usually drive home, assuming my chauffeur isn’t about.