I’m beginning to change my mind. Given the thoroughness of the approach to transport problems, I was convinced that, apart from the odd extra wait here and there, and maybe one bad day, transport would pass off much more smoothly than expected, not least because there has been so much crying ‘wolf’.
Security, though, threatens to unwind the whole process. The problem is that security is dumb. Or at least it is run by people who are dumb. Actually, that’s unfair – they are merely under orders and have no authority to compromise or to risk assess. So if you get a family of four who are more Home Counties than Kate Middleton, you still rip off the baby’s nappy to see if it is hiding an IED. That’s because there is no one around to say – look we’re a bit pushed here, give the obvious ones a miss.
So given that we now know that most of the security staff will be squaddies, who are hardly likely to understand the subtleties of risk assessment given that many will have just been in an environment even more dangerous than the back streets of Newham. Security wrecked the Millenium Dopme launch on New Year’s Eve 1999 and it threatens a repeat.