Airport bomb "there for a year"!

Belfast International Airport is investigating an embarrassing lapse in security. Or more accurately, just a typical example of the lack of attention to detail that seems to pervade British society these days. It beggars belief that nobody thought to ask about the car, which had a pipe bomb in it. The vehicle was in a long-stay car park and airport parking firm Q Park said "it was confident that car had not been there for a year".

The reports of this only suggest that police are investigating the possibility that the car was there for almost a year. I suppose someone just suggested the possibility. But the real problem here is the need to investigate such an error. So many horses bolt from so many stable doors. I think a lot of our problems stem from bored staff, doing tedious jobs and not really bothering. After all, is it such a fantastic job wandering around a vast array of cars, watching planes zooming off to different climes, letting your mind drift off into fantasies. Honestly, if it were me, I'd not be too sure if a car was there for a year or a day. If the system has flaws (the company said this vehicle was not pre-booked so was not on the number plate recognition system) then who knows what car is what?

One only has to thank the chances that came about to render this bomb a virtual dud.

G20 police hit man who dies of heart attack!

The police operating on the day of the G20 summit were on "high alert" but some seem like trigger happy characters about to be let out as jack-in-the-boxes. The Guardian has obtained footage of a policeman giving an innocent bystander a two-handed push to the ground. This man subsequently died of a heart attack.

As the policing of London, and elsewhere for that matter, comes under scrutiny again, it seems that there are officers who are "up for it". The footage may not be conclusive but it does show a man being violently pushed to the ground. No doubt the officer who did it is rueing the day.

Policing violent demonstrations is not an easy thing, but I have my doubts that the police behaved in an exemplary way throughout. The media has reported that some heavy handed tactics were used in places. We want firm but fair policing, not some replica of a stormtroopers' convention.

The result is a grieving widow, the IPPC delving into it all, and a very unpleasant after effect all round. Mr.Tomlinson, the man who died, was just walking home. If only that was all that happened!

Obama gives a raspberry to Blackberry pickers!

Quite right! President-elect Barack Obama says he has a plan to retain his beloved Blackberry once he moves into the White House tomorrow. The security types are beside themselves. Why? Because they see it as their business to control POTUS and get very touchy if they can't.

He is, to certain extent, hampered by the requirement of the post-Watergate Presidential Records Act of 1978 to keep a record of every White House communication. But let's have a bit of common sense. I reckon this President is going to be a man of the people and not a man for the government machinery. He's got a good brain on him. He'll find a legitimate, honest and practical way to keep his Blackberry. It will be better all round.

I'm getting visions of Michael J Fox's character buzzing around Michael Douglas' president, in that marvellous film, An American President. "Not now, Lewis!". The movie's tagline? Well it was - Why can't the most powerful man in the world have the one thing he wants most?

Man "decapitated" on Greyhound Bus!

Rumours abound about a Greyhound bus stabbing in Canada. Apparently a young man was stabbed and, according to witnesses, beheaded aboard a Greyhound bus in Manitoba on Wednesday night.

Police have not confirmed the identity of the victim pending notification of his family, saying only that he was stabbed while riding on a bus that was en route to Winnipeg from Edmonton.

Such things are extremely rare. However, I would not think it above the suspicions of fellow passengers to think each other capable of peculiar or odd behaviour. I well remember travelling on a Greyhound bus (it could have been a Trailways) and a chap regailed me about whether the Queen ever came out of Buckingham Palace. "She does come out, doesn't she?" he repeated, seemingly at every turn in the road. Another passenger gave me chapter and verse on her journey from the Roman Catholic church to the Mormons, via what appeared to be every denomination in the USA! Yet another had gory details of the Vietnam War.

Most are genuinely agreeable and make exceedingly good travelling companions. But, as far as I know, there is little or no screening for nutters and nuisance-makers. These you have to deal with according to your own abilities.