I read in today's Metro that one of Boris Johnson's bright ideas for tackling crime is to install airlport style scanners at railway stations. To be fair this patently daft idea has already been put forward by Torylite New Labour so he can't take all the blame.
This just won't work, the average train takes far more passengers than an aircraft and there just is not time to screen all the passengers in the limited time that a train is being made ready. To prevent terrorists from joining the train elsewhere it would also be necessary to install security screening at every railway station in the UK, many of which are not even manned, not to mention railway/tube/metro interchanges.
And while on the subject of Airport security I could not help notice that the staff at Stansted Airport were asking every other passenger to place their shoes through the X-Ray machine. Now it would not be too difficult for any potential miscreant to get through that, so whats the point of doing it at all, aside from making the whole process of travelling more unpleasant than it needs to be.
2008-05-06 @ 14:00