Jerk those knees, Coagulation!

So some bombs were allegedly found on a cargo plane, allegedly from Yemen, and have since been used by the terrorists in government to frighten the crap out of their voters. 'They could have blown up in mid-air. That plane could have come down on YOUR HOUSE!' Just who is doing the terrorising here?

The whole point of terrorism is to make people terrified. The clue is in the title, you don't need to read the job description. If you want to defeat terrorism, the way to do it is to quietly defuse those bombs and say nothing. Nobody is scared, and a group of baffled terrorists are left wondering why their bombs didn't go off and why nobody is running around like headless chickens at the headless chicken all-night rave. Terrifying the population by screaming 'Bomb!' when it's already been dealt with, then threatening everyone with falling plane parts is... well, it's terrorism. It produces exactly what the terrorists intend. They don't need to make bombs that work, they just need to make them look sufficiently bomby and our own government will do the rest for them.

Now, Theresa May (or may not, we'll have to wait and see) has decided to ban unaccompanied freight from Yemen and Somalia. Oh, that's a big help. I mean, it's not as if they'd send someone along with the bomb. That would be suicide. They'd never do that. It would be like some kind of suicidal bomber sort of thing. Totally unheard of.

What do we import from Somalia anyway? I haven't noticed 'Made in Somalia' on anything in the shops. Is there much air freight traffic coming that way? Somalia isn't likely to bomb us. Most of them have family here.

Come to think of it, what do we import from Yemen? Do we really get our toner cartridges from there? Or do they have an exclusive supply deal with American synagogues?

She has also taken the step of banning toner cartridges over 500g from hand luggage on domestic flights. Because every traveller has one in their back pocket, and no terrorist would think of using any other kind of container for their explosives.

In Newspeak, I think this would be rendered as doubleplusunclever. 'Stupid' is far too small a word.

If you were getting on a flight with a laser-printer toner cartridge, the security people will definitely want to look at it because only a total dolt would want to lug that around departures for hours. Why would anyone have one? They are not much use without a laser printer and if you think a leaky pen in your shirt pocket is a disaster, wait till you experience a toner leak in your carry-on bag. Does this spell the end for the hand-delivered toner cartridge business? No. Because there isn't one. Printer cartridges travel by air freight, not as passengers.

I would doubt that anyone has ever had a 500g toner cartridge in their carry-on luggage for any flight anywhere. If they did, I would bet that security would show quite a bit of interest in such an unusual item.

This is it. This is the bottom of the barrel scraped clean through and all the underlying soil removed right down to the bedrock. This is the knee-jerk to end all knee-jerks.

They are now banning things that don't happen.

Next, a ban on time travel and on the sun rising in the West.



Update: Smoking Hot has another take on this.