New security area 1st Floor Gatwick south

[PAXboy]

SOE

Quite why that needs a multi million pound investment is beyond me

1. Because it looks like they are doing something.
2. It shows activity aimed at solving the problem.
3. By the time the problem is proved not to have been solved - the people who bought the equipment will be somewhere else.
4. The people who are left will be able to say that the company 'did all that they could and installed special apparatus. Next question please.'
5. Oh yes, and that it wasn't their fault.
6. They will then order more equipment and procedures that, by the time they are proved not ...

This is the same in 99% of the companies that I have seen or worked at across the 35 years of my adult life. But the speed of this kind of thing is increasing and the reasons for that are (I contend):

1. The UK has largely taken on the US idea that 'technology' can fix it.
2. We have had many discussions in this forum about how El Al uses intensive manual labour to screen pax and everyone else tries to do it with cheaper technology. One method has been shown to be consistently more successful, the more so that the airline in question is the one that is a favourite target.
3. As 'managers' understand far less about the company these days (on account of not having worked their way up) they like to rely on technology and other bolt-ons to make up for the expertise that they like.
4. It's easier to put in the press releases and annual report that you have spent millions on a 'system' than on hiring good people and training them and retaining them across 20 years to build up knowledge. That takes real money and real leadership and real brains.
5. Another example of this is H.R. departments using personality tests (Psychometric testing) that are judged entirely by algorithm and computer. Since no human made a decision = no human can be blamed. [Myers Briggs and Brainbench]

Much of this could also be posted in the 'Sterile Area at MAN' thread. When the system is breached, there is an inquiry and the statement 'We must make sure that this doesn't happen again'. Which it won't Next time, it will be a different breach!