Tuesday 23 August 2011

The Price Of Freedom Is Eternal Vigilance!

A worried resident dialled 999 after spotting two men chaining a suitcase to a lamp post outside her home.
Because bombs are often chained to things, I suppose. In case other terrorists steal them.

You can’t trust anyone these days….
A panicked Mrs Kinsler called emergency services and was rung back a short time later by an operator, who told her not to worry as the case contained traffic monitoring equipment.
/facepalm
Mrs Kinsler said the incident had given her quite a shock.
Bless!
“We are told to be vigilant and it looked suspicious.

If a council van had turned up, I would have thought it was OK.

“How ridiculous in these times, when we are all scared anyway and looking out for bags being left anywhere, they do that.”
Yes, I guess they vastly overestimated the average Westcliffe resident’s common sense.
Mehmet Mazhar, Southend Council’s manager for traffic and highways, apologised for causing any alarm.

He said: “The council’s traffic management and road safety team is installing this equipment at various locations in the town to measure traffic volumes and speeds.

“It is cheaper for us to use our own equipment to obtain traffic data, rather than to request the work to be carried out by a specialist traffic survey company.

“We apologise for any concerns which may have unwittingly been caused to residents.”
Should they perhaps label their traffic monitoring devices in future, to ensure the paranoid hypervigilent residents don’t panic unnecessarily?

Oh. Wait. Back to Mrs Kinsler:
Mrs Kinsler added: “When I did look a lot closer it did say traffic or something.
Ummm….

9 comments:

Bob said...

The readers comments put more meat on the bone. There was a suspect package around the corner at the mosque last week resulting in road closures. Air burst bombs are frequently strapped to lamp posts abroad. Never approach people you suspect of planting a bomb. Never go too close to a suspect package to see what it says on the lid. Oh and they don't often say 'bomb'. they're usually disguised as something else ( shock).
So I'd feel safer living next door to her than some know all who laughs at vigilant people and can't see further than X factor or Celeb Big Bro..
Just saying.

George Speller said...

If it had been labelled "traffic management" it would have been OK? As long as it's not labelled "bomb"?

Anonymous said...

I, personally, would like to see terrorists become more socially aware and label their bombs plainly, for cultural and ethnic diversity reasons, labels should be in laguages that are instantly readable by all local residents or translators should be made availabe in the vicinity of the Bomb, Bim, Kabbooom.

Bob said...

It's probably a double bluff. An eavesdropping machine labelled as a traffic management device reported as a bomb so now able to eavesdrop at leisure. Everyone happy !

Angry Exile said...

Normal for Essex? No, wait...

Mehmet Mazhar, Southend Council’s manager for traffic and highways...

Sounds forrin, he must be in on it.

Dick Puddlecote said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Well you do have to nail things down these days!
An Al Qaida spokesman in Manchester complained "We had just started to prepare the car for our martyrdom operation, left it to get the bomb and some bloody Infidel just got in and drove off! It was a nice little runner from Ahemed D'haley's Motorama too. One owner and genuine mileage! May fleas infest his beard!"
Actually given it was the local council, terroism was probably not a bad call!
TTFN :)

David Gillies said...

There's actually an interesting thing going on here. You can print up some logos and decals to go on the side of a Transit van no worries, and it's cheap as chips. Paint your bomb blaze orange, stencil 'West Berkshire Council - Airborne Particulate Monitoring Unit No. 24752" on the side, put it somewhere high value, in Newbury on market day, say. and drive off. This woman only called in because the people she saw were a couple of ordinary blokes. Put 'em in boiler suits and slap some old nonsense on the side of the van (Wessex Environmental Health Agency, say, which I just totally made up, but face it - you'd have to do a bit of leg-work to know it was bogus) and she'd be none the wiser. Now I can figure this out because I am not a drooling imbecile, plus I know how cowed most people are by even the spurious appearance of officialdom. I also, really, 100%, pinky-swears, don't want to do any of this stuff, in case da Feds is watching.

The security services seem to do a bloody good job rounding up the various gangs of nutters intent on doing us harm. It makes you wonder whether this is because (a) the counter-terrorist guys are extraordinarily competent (b) to be a nutter turns you into a drooling imbecile likely to get spotted (c) not being a drooling imbecile makes you less likely to be a nutter (d) there's not really all that many nutters out there who want to kill lots of innocent people at random (or (e) some other thing I haven't thought of.) We know wickedness and stupidity are not necessarily bed-fellows. Lots of very bad men have been very clever. It's a bit of a conundrum.

I'm probably on some government watch list just for posting this.

JuliaM said...

"The readers comments put more meat on the bone. There was a suspect package around the corner at the mosque last week..."

It wasn't a 'suspect package'. Someone had left a suitcase full of pillows (a donation), and everyone panicked. Just like this case.

"I, personally, would like to see terrorists become more socially aware and label their bombs plainly..."

And they should be the classic design - round, with a fuse!

"Sounds forrin, he must be in on it."

Heh!

" This woman only called in because the people she saw were a couple of ordinary blokes. Put 'em in boiler suits and slap some old nonsense on the side of the van (Wessex Environmental Health Agency, say, which I just totally made up, but face it - you'd have to do a bit of leg-work to know it was bogus) and she'd be none the wiser."

Indeed! And you do have to wonder, don't you?