The UK’s apparently overstretched postal system has been placed under even greater strain of late thanks to the Government’s distribution of some 25 million booklets designed to teach us all how we might prepare for an act of terrorism and/or a declared state of national emergency.

This quaint little 22-page missive urges us to ‘Go In, Stay In, Tune In’, offers basic First Aid advice and instructs the populus to “be vigilant” at all times when it comes to spotting potential terrorists in the street. “Public safety is our first priority” opines the Government, at the same time imparting details of all that’s apparently being done to protect the UK.

Should we be clamouring to read the contents of ‘Preparing For Emergencies: What You Need To Know’? Given that Prime Minister Blair has allocated over £8 million of Joe Tax Payer’s money to distribute these ‘anti-terror instructions’, you’d think so. And when you find out that Debbie Spargo (chief executive of the Emergency Planning Society), Peter Clark (ACPO’s national co-ordinator on terrorist activities) and MI5 supremo Eliza Manningham-Buller have all provided well-scripted quotes, the degree of credence is raised above the bar set by your average Westminster ‘mailer’.

However, isn’t it a tad rich of the Government to be spending what many would construe an obscene amount of money on delivering advice that amounts to no more than basic common sense when, at the same time, the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force and the Army have had to grin and bear swathes of financial cutbacks?

As Steve Goodwin MBE rightly points out in this month’s Opinion (‘Are we really ‘Spoilt Brits’?, pp13-14), no less than 12 war ships and two submarines are to be axed over the next few years. In line with this financial prudency – or should that be stupidity? – the Home Office has also shelved plans, for example, to accommodate Essex Police’s demands for patrol vessels covering the Thames Estuary. Vessels which would have been used to clamp down on the influx of illegal immigrants, would-be terrorists and drug traffickers.

While the Government continues to ignore the porosity of our national borders we’ll never be safe. The latest booklet is all smoke and mirrors. Spin replacing substance. We’ll obviously have to wait for an atrocity on the scale of 9/11 before our political masters wake up and smell the coffee.

Brian Sims, Editor

Source

SMT