Radicalisation Preventability, Securitisation Prioritality

The Glorious Successor has unveiled a wide-ranging package of measures again. This one is intended "to bolster security in public places while attempting to prevent young people being radicalised by violent extremists". The plan is to build barriers outside airports, railway stations and ports, which will protect them from car bomb attacks until someone manages to drive a car through the barriers. Then I suppose we'll have to think again, and perhaps raise the time limit on internment to a hundred and twelve days.

Gordon is also setting up a new unit, in which "police and security intelligence and research" will co-operate to identify individuals who have not yet fallen under the influence of terrorists, but who might do so one day. This is apparently a response to the MI5 director general's warning last week (it was not, according to the Independent, a mere allegation) that the evil ones were "grooming" children to carry out terror attacks. If things go really well, and is Sir Ian Blair remains in post to remind us all of the meaning of corporate responsibility, perhaps in a little while we shall have our first paedo-terrorist shoot-to-protect incident. Gosh, I feel safer already.

In a statement to the House of Commons, Gordon offered further rebuttal to those who believe he has no sense of humour: "The objective of al Qaida and related groups is to manipulate political and humanitarian issues in order to gain support for their agenda of murder and violence"; evidently al-Qaida's brand of interventionism is not hard-headed enough for Gordon; "and to deliberately maim and kill fellow human beings, including innocent women and children" - and they don't even buy their weapons from us, at least not officially. "We must not allow anyone," least of all a bunch of pesky paedo-Muslims, "to use terrorist activities as a means to divide" British workers from their British jobs, "or to isolate those belonging to a particular faith or community."