The same think tank (and I use those two words carefully) in an earlier report warned that utility workers are a source of risk and should be investigated






still waiting!!

I see the recent 'problem' caused more by Bush and Blair, and besides, sns3guppy correctly states that it's not the body count that matters it's the continous threat that the terrorism causes. I grew up watching the news each evening waiting to see another poor family member of a para that had his head blown off while patrolling a street in Northern Ireland. I used to fly with an ex RUC officer, his stories of escaping an IRA death squad were frightning. 40years of that pointless bloodshed, America has had Pearl harbour and 9/11.

Over-reaction only helps the terrorist achieve his aim, by it's very definition. One act of terrorism, many inconveniences and prohibitions result. Job done, if we let it be so. From experience I know what it is to be targeted. It is easy to become a victim, but we shouldn't let it affect our everyday lives to the extent that we cannot function.

Thats a fairly defeatest post from you Guppy :(


I think public perception on how to deal with terrorism may very well be changing to a more considered approch because of one big lesson... IRAQ

Personaly I dont see why aviation has to wear every miss-guided and/or ill-advised polititions ideas about where the next terror threat will come from. It can come from anywhere, and probably be just as dramatic, if not more-so, then anything that can be done with an aircraft.

Remember Anthrax via mail... post 9-elleven, I recall people being far more concerned about what was arriving in their own mail then the posibility that an aircraft will fly into their building - 99.9% of people DONT work in tall buildings.

It is unforetunate that as a pilot I have to piont out alternate possibilities (petrol at the night club scenario) to counter these 'seen to be doing something' reports (or is that 'inflating their own self importance' reports) that focus on aviation as THE threat.

In a land where the Bobby has had the authority and power for years to shout "Halt, or I shall yell 'Halt!' again!", perhaps you do need a little education on dealing with terrorism. Simply because you've been a frequent victim of terrorism doesn't mean you should laugh it off. Nor for one moment imagine that simply because a light airplane can't do a lot of collateral damage, it's not a threat to be taken very seriously. It is a threat, primarily to you, the private pilot, who will be most effected by the fall out of what might occur.

Again, it matters not a whit if ten people or a thousand might be killed by a bomb in a light airplane. A handfull of people, while certainly a tragedy, isn't the goal of the terrorist act in the first place. That no sigificant amount of physical damage might be caused by a cherokee, is of no consequence. It's irrelevant. What is very relevant is the results that will happen politically, financially, and with respect to freedom.

I flew an ambulance flight post 09/11 in which we were unable to leave the airport. It was locked up tight. I was standing inside the fence with a heart team and a pile of equipment and coolers, and no way to get through the airport fence. Security concerns had high barbed wire and concertin wire on fences around the field, the gates chained and padlocked, and no way to get the surgeons to their body. I had to call the fire department to arrange to have someone come unlock the gate. That's more than a mere inconvenience, but for you, the private pilot, the ability to fly at all might be entirely lost should a timed attack take place with several light airplanes.

The damage done is irrelevant. The results afterward are very relevant.

No, the IRA hasn't done that. But they could, as could anyone. If you think a little excitement by Lord Twattle hurts your feelings because it's an anti-aviation sentiment, then wait for the real fall out when it happens.

As for the US supporting the IRA, we're still locking horns with some of their folks, and their trainees, in Colombia, among other places. Neither the IRA nor Sinn Fein has never been a friend to the US. Never the less, you've got your domestic troubles, the US has hers; bigger threats face you than a few peat farmers lighting a fuse after tossing back a pint.

I was in XXX in the UK recently and taking a walk one evening. I had to laugh out loud when a man came charging down a street to catch up with a Bobby who was waiting next to me to cross the road. The man was excited and jibbering about this terrible crime that had befallen him. When he calmed down, he explained that he didn't like the meal he'd been served, and the resteraunt owner wouldn't provide a refund. Oh, the horror. With crime like that and a police force armed with a pen and and a night stick, doubtless you're prepared for a massive enemy invasion. Sleep tight.

That wasn't a terrorist attack. That was a boy, a child who elected to commit suicide with no real forethought or preparation. Change that to six or seven dedicated extremists who coordinate their attacks (real attacks, not just a crashed airplane) at the same time and you'll see aviation come to a standstill not only in Florida but throughout the US.

Attack? Not even close.

No, actually. It's increadibly easy. Much, much more so than you might imagine. And that is a big part of the problem.

Not exactly. What's involved in shipping via an ACMI B747 is a little more involved than simply chartering the airplane and putting on board a bomb. You can't simply lease a 747. You can arrange for the Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance, and Insurance (ACMI) and arrange transportation of your goods, pending approval, but it's an involved process in which security plays a part on many levels.

It's what I do, presently.

Our 'Bobby's' manage just fine without having to be armed with M16's, glocks and MP5's thank you! And the last two invasions that Britain faced, once by a French chap and another time from a mad Austrian, we also saw them off without arming our coppers or from any help from the US, despite what hollywood might tell you!

I actually really like reading your posts sns3, especially on the private forum, one thing i have always admired about american pilots is the vast amount of flying experience that you guys have so please dont take this personally, but when it comes to domestic matters of defence, civil defence and military inteligence my confidence lies very much with our own professionals and experince that we hard earned over many years.

Absolute, complete and utter rubbish.

If they wanted to cause maximum loss of life they would have "smeared" NYC with the aircraft and killed far more people.

It was a symbolic attack, and there were ways to kill far more people.

As for your argument about the IRA, well the Americans decided to fund them for quite some time. I have absolutely no sympathy for the Americans, yes 11/9 was an awful event, but in the greater scale of things it really wasn't that bad.

How many innocent Iraqis have been killed ?

What goes around comes around......

The ironic thing about knee jerk reactions after 911 was that all the aeroplanes involved were in fact on IFR flight plans and talking to ATC, so there is no reason to clamp down on VFR at all.

You could put a reasonable amount of explosive in a light aeroplane but whether you could do much damage with it is another matter. You'd do better to park up at the end of the Heathrow runways and get a stinger AA missile out of the boot and take out a fully loaded 747, or blowing up your truck bomb in the City of London....Oh yea, the IRA already did that one...........

Don't get too carried away. We're the reason you're not speaking German at the moment, actually.

"As for the US supporting the IRA, we're still locking horns with some of their folks, and their trainees, in Colombia, among other places. Neither the IRA nor Sinn Fein has never been a friend to the US."

SNG do you actually mean this? If I correct for the double-negative, this is what you have actually said;

"either the IRA or Sinn Fein has ever been a friend to the US."

As for US support of the IRA, wasn't there a fundrasing outfit called NorAid?

That would be the opposite of what I said. Sinn Fein has never been a friend to the US, and visa versa. The IRA has never been a friend to the US, and visa versa. Can't be more clear than that.

The US has never supported NorAid, and in fact classifies some of it's sympathies as terrorist organizations, along with the UK. NorAid is not and never has been supported by the US government. It does not represent the United States, and is a private organization.

By the time the US entered the war two years in, the Battle of Britain had been won, air authority established and Hitler had abandoned his plan to invade. I suggest that we would not now be speaking German, but the rest of Europe might be, if it wasn't for the invaulable assistance of the USA in joining us in the bid to liberate Europe.

Education is a wonderful thing.

I hate to disagree with you, but if America hadn't joined in (late, as usual) the rest of Europe would now be speaking Russian, comrade.

I spent a lot of time in the US in the early 1980s and encountered an overwhelming sympathy for the IRA coupled with a hostility for the UK position. There were open collections for Noraid on the streets, and I saw many fund-raising events organised in Boston and San Francisco. There may not have been active government support for these activities, but there was widespread tolerance. Terrorist leaders were fêted at the White House, and led St Patrick's Day parades.

Times change and events change attitudes. As I was affected by the carnage in my local pub in Caterham, or by being just around the corner when the Harrods bomb went off, so were Americans that September 11th.

After all, the United States were founded by a terrorist insurrection against the legitimate authority. One man's terrorist is the next man's freedom fighter. Normally, it depends who wins.

By the way, Guppy, the British successfully and definitively fought off invasion in 1940 whilst Ambassador Kennedy was doing his best to destabilise them, and whilst the US government was procrastinating for electoral reasons. The invasion of the European mainland and the ultimate defeat of Hitler was another matter.

You may be right comrade!

Also, some people in the USA obviously regarded the IRA as some kind of Robin Hood organisation. I was reasonably close to two IRA bombs, one at the Old Bailey and the other at Staples Corner. I was beginning to think that they were following me around.

Emmmm - but if you can't fart on a major airfield without someone knowing about it then the option, if aviation is your thing and you are a bad boy, is to move to a small airfield. The argument about cars is a weak argument, all major sites are protected by concrete barriers and, where necessary, an overt law enforcement presence. This is not a secret.

People, from what I've read, seem to be confusing the private guard forces at airports (muppets) with the authorities trying to deal with this problem (generally good guys). The above is obvious and all this rhetoric about the authorities not knowing what they are doing is complete crap, if there is no threat at the moment as has been suggested, it does not mean that there won't be a threat in the future. If drugs and people are being moved in and out of the country, why not this issue?

Prudent command and control strategies dictate that they need to gauge the issue and suggest proactive and reactive counter measures to their operational and political masters. GA would be better off working with them as stakeholders rather than against them IMHO, if GA sets out it stall with deference to this notion, then GA will be all the better equipped to deal with issues as they arise.

All this 'we're self regulating and self policing' thinking is what is going to undo GA. That's the dangerous thinking here IMHO.

:ugh:

Guppy makes a very good point. Terrorism should be taken very seriously indeed.

Considering though that there haven't been any specific proposals yet from the Government on how to make private aviation more secure wouldn't a more constructive discussion to be having be what can be done to make GA more secure?...Or whether we should bother at all?

Also; without making any judgement either way I wonder how many people on here would change their views if there was a terrorist attack using a private plane tomorrow?

I would think the same as I did when two men drove a 4x4 into a Scottish passenger terminal. I didn't go out and sell my 4x4.

Other than grounding all private aircraft how would anyone ever prevent a PA28 crashing into the kop end at Old Trafford at 3.00pm pm one Saturday afternoon while the cameras are rolling?

Sure there is a risk, but the risk / reward ratio is what most people are concerned about. Disproportionate mitigation measures are a bigger risk to our 'way of life' than any terrorist.

Rather than agonising over how we could make private aviation more secure, perhaps we should spend some time considering if we sensibly need to. The reason I used the microlight analogy earlier was to give a clue to the scale of the perceived problem The whole point of microlighting was that anyone with at least part of a brain could do it and it was simple and inexpensive. A microlight can also launch from any flatish, levelish field slightly bigger than a football pitch. How many fields are there like that in these fair Isles? How safe can we sensibly make that without killing it as an activity?

As I also said earlier, these ill thought out and over valued threats are music to the policeman mentality. If we are worried that the general population will be worried and take it seriously, it is perhaps up to us as fellow members of the general population to expose it for what it is. It could so easily be ridiculed in the form of a Goon Show plot.

If the freedoms we have now are further curtailed or rendered tedious through over regulation, the terrs have won yet again.

GBZ - and if you take your microlight analogy a bit further, consider a paramotor...

Has every body foregotten the Anthrax scare post 9-elleven ? It was actualy a big concern for most people - far more-so then aircraft :eek:....... Unforetunatly it doesnt have the same evening TV news effect as aircraft flying into buildings, probably why most have foregotten all about it :hmm:

.......WHO needs an aircraft when you can post it :ooh:

Not quite. What people are worried about is perceived risk. This is skewed by things like media attention but also by the amount of influence that the people themselves have on the risk.

What a terrorists want is to change this perceived risk, not the actual statistical risk, and thereby change behaviour of people, eventually changing society.

There's a lot of statistics on the web about actual causes of death in the US. This is just one of them:

10 Leading Causes of Death in the U.S., 2004 — Infoplease.com

Nine out of ten main causes of death in the US are basically health-related. A lot of these can be mitigated by adopting a healthier lifestyle. Yet the government does not do a whole lot in encouraging people to get a better lifestyle, or discouraging unhealthy lifestyles.

The other main cause of death is "unintentional injuries" and if you dig a little deeper into the statistics, you'll find that most of these are motor vehicle incidents - 40.000 deaths per year on average in the US alone. A lot of which can be prevented by wearing seatbelts, not go driving while drunk, not speeding and so forth. Perhaps even by raising the legal limit to drive a car from 16 to 18. Or encouraging people to take public transport, a pushbike or even walk somewhere. But oh, no, let's not do anything about the ultimate display of personal freedom!

Dogs kill way more people each year than sharks in the US. Yet Yaws is seen as a thriller and Lassie as a family movie. There's about as many deaths from furniture catching fire as from plane accidents. Yet, people have no fear whatsoever from sitting (and smoking) on a couch but loads of them have a fear of flying.

Bruce Schneier, in his book "Beyond Fear" identifies the following reasons for the difference between perceived risk and actual risk:
- People exaggerate spectacular but rare risks and downplay common risks.
- People have trouble estimating risks for anything not exactly like their normal situation
- Personified risks are perceived to be greater than anonymous risks.
- People underestimate risks they willingly take and overestimate risks in situations they can't control
- People overestimate risks that are being talked about and remain an object of public scrutiny.

Terrorists know this and play on these five perceptions so that a relatively minor attack has the greatest possible impact. 9/11 killed 3000 people one day and has so far been a unique occurrence. AIDS alone kills approximately 10.000 people per day, every day of the year (3 million deaths annually, worldwide). Yet, how much money is being spent on airline security vs. AIDS research? How much media attention does the War on Terror get vs. AIDS research? How much pressure does the US government put on countries like Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and a few others for condemning terrorism and punishing/extraditing terrorist leaders vs. how much pressure does the US government put on the Pope to allow, or even encourage, condom usage in Africa?

A big part of this is the question "can this happen to me"? With driving and with a lot of other activities we feel in control, so we downplay the risks. Other activities, such as going to a busy market square in Israel, or having sex in Africa, we feel we can avoid them. But there are activities, such as flying as a passenger in a commercial aircraft, where we feel at risk, we can't avoid, and don't have control of the situation. Those are the activities that play the terrorists card the best.

Bomb in a small airplane? Most of the general public will never go near a small airplane so that part of the perceived risk is zero. They do go into high-rise buildings but that's something they do every day and there they feel in control. And the payload of a small aircraft is such that even a high explosive (if you can obtain that, get it on board and explode it at the right moment) will do limited damage. Less than what could be obtained with a small van in a parking garage. Yes, it will kill the pilot and a few people on the ground but it won't fundamentally alter the lifestyle of a lot of people. I don't think that makes a good terrorist plot - although it would have an effect on GA, for sure.

I'm not saying we should ignore terrorism altogether. But I see a lot of short-sightedness in the response to perceived terrorism threats. All sorts of silly and counterproductive legislation being passed, and this legislation is then used for non-terrorism-related goals. People, government, politicians, police forces, airlines and a lot of other stakeholders all have different, and sometimes hidden, agendas and find that by invoking the t-word they can advance those agendas.

Fortunately the tide is turning. I read today that there's a Senate hearing about whether customs officials are allowed to search your laptop for suspicious files or not. This was one of the measures that were needed, someone thought, to stop terrorism but whose only effect seems to be to annoy a lot of business travelers. Recently an air marshal was prevented from boarding the flight he was supposed to safeguard, because his name was on the TSA no-fly list, so now, finally, TSA is modifying the way the no-fly list works. And Charlie Black has backed down from, and will possibly be fired over his speculation that a terrorist attack right now would be good for McCains polls.

Backpacker - great post.

Remember that politicians like to be seen to be doing things that make them look good in the eyes of the electorate. Is there just a chance that this issue was given lots of spin by the Government to make it look like they are competent in what is a key area for the electorate, law and order?

Personally I'm far to cynical to imagine that this is anything but a cover-up story to get us off issues like the economy, fuel prices, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan etc., all of which are seen by much of the public as areas of government failure.

Must say the title of this thread reminds me of Peter Sellers and The Pink Panther series - this has all the ingredients of a Sellers plot!

You said "Bummmm" , no you said "Bummm" then "Wait my hand is on fire! AGGH"

If 9/11 and the subsequent War on Terror, including the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, would not have happened, do you think Bush would have been reelected?

As you said: people want to see the government do something. Waging war is probably the best way of being seen doing something. Even if the war is waged for the wrong reasons, with no clear objective and no exit strategy.

And this was made worse by the fact that until recently the political climate in the US was such that you could not even criticize the US government and presidency for what happened with the WoT, Iraq and Afghanistan, or risk being dismissed as "unpatriottic", "not supporting the troops" etc. In other words you were not allowed to question the status quo, which was brought on by politicians. Of course not being able to question the status quo also meant that the political situation would never change. And that is exactly what a sitting presidency/congress/senate wants, because its means getting reelected.

It's already been done :eek:

Vehicle: Little Nellie
Owner: James Bond
Status: Stored at Q-Branch

A small one-seater autogiro, just 9.5 feet in length, a weight of 250 pounds with a top speed of 160 km/h. It's maximum altitude was 18,000 feet, perfect for recon missions.

Specs
The brightly coloured autogiro was laden with the following mechanisms:

• Dual, synchronized machine guns
• Left and right forward firing rocket launchers
• Rear firing dual flame throwers with an 80 yard range
• Dual smoke screen dispensers
• ATA heat seeking missiles
• Aerial mines, to be dropped from above the victim

Ok adding my bit to this thread.
As I have posted before I live in London and use the London Tube system a lot.

Come rush hour masses of people push, shove and squeeze to get onto the tubes which are packed with hundreds of people standing shoulder to shoulder.

Returning from My Business jet flights I drag My overnight case behind me as do many people of all different races and colours.

Where is the security? where are the scanning devices so that my case and others can be checked.

Where are the security people checking whether I have more than 100 ml of fluid?
NON EXISTANT!!!

To the Government Terrorism= Aviation, Aviation =Terrorism end of story. It is about time we said enough is enough stop destroying our industry and making aviation the scapegoat for Government failings.

What a joke all this is. All these politicians and so called law makers can do to justify their non productive jobs is to sit around thinking up even more hairbrained ideas to waste even more public money and to restrict peoples freedom more and more.

In the UK we are one big brother state. We claim our freedoms yet we are more controlled and have less freedom.

Production in the UK went down the drain. Now we have nothing but finanancial markets and leaisure industries and law maker jobs.

The Government want to create another 3000 jobs for what???

Fly into any small airport that takes just a few movements a day and see the army of security staff standing around with nothing to do waiting for the odd Cessna 172 to arrive so that they can jump on its two occupants to save the country.

The uk has gone mad

Pace

I agree with the majority opinion here, there is far to much focus / attention / Paranoia from the Government on Aviation as a tool for terrorism, especially when, as has been explained in previous post, there are far more easier targets for terrorists to use.

BUT

One good thing that could possibly stem from this report is a decent border control or proper coastguard. B*llocks to terrorism, a bigger problem this country has is its out of control immigration, lets face it, anyone can get in.

Anybody can get in anyway.

The UK has a few thousand miles of coastline, and you cannot stop a boat getting in, especially after dark.

This is the reality of the "free world".

The country I come from had dual barbed wire fences, about 30m apart, all around it. The fence was electrified, lethally of course. The space between the fences was mostly mined with anti-personnel mines. There was a road all the way along, patrolled regularly by armed guards.

That worked pretty well; short of Special Forces know-how, somebody getting you a foreign passport, or you brown-nosing and creeping around the Communist Party circles for many years until you were "trusted", you would not get out (or in, though of course nobody would want to do that anyway). Even lakes which were shared with the "decadent West" were closely patrolled, with underwater nets, although that is definitely where I would have crossed had I still been there.

The only way large numbers can come into the UK is via conventional overt routes and those are all controlled.

Border controls are meaningless for controlling individual mobility.

All that limits mobility nowadays is controls on employment (illegal work offers pretty limited options, unless you are female and desperate) and the fact that not everybody wants to uproot everything and move to a country where the tabloids, and many people, will hate you and where everything costs a fortune.

A recurring theme of Government action on terrorism (and I don't particularly blame them for this) is that only measures that are practical and easy to implement are generally done. Extra security at airports where security is already in place is relatively easy. Walling off the back of Parliament is quite simple. Putting scanners on the tube? Well that's harder, not really practical (we have knife scanners at some stations and the police use portable ones sometimes but they are more concerned with catching feral youths than terrorists) and although it was talked about I think the government realises that they are never going to make the tube secure.

Lord Carlile is just one 'expert' who happens to have written a report which contains concerns about aviation and terrorism. I actually doubt whether the Government will pay much attention to aspects of the report relating to "lax" security at small airfields and even if they do they will soon realise that attempts to clamp down on private flying will just be impractical....the police don't have the resources and although Lord Carlile raised "concerns" I don't think he has much of an idea of what to do about them.

The police can ask private flyers to be vigilant but much more than that would fail a basic cost and practicality test so I rather doubt we have much to fear in this case...

So what you are basically saying is... whatever the UK Government does with regards to Border Control... in order to minimalise Illegal Immigration... is essentially pointless?

I agree, but these conventional routes are definately not controlled properly IMHO.

Be that as it may... people are still coming here to the UK, illegally... in the thousands.

If borders are monitored / guarded more closely and frequently and if laws are tightened, it will without doubt make it more difficult for people to come here illegally.

SS

PS. Sorry for the thread drift :rolleyes:

In 2005 the Government estimated the UK had about 500,000 illegal immigrants.

Quite what could be done to improve border control I'm not sure (certainly the plans for a new border police service should be welcomed)....most of Europe after all gave up having border controls ages ago. But then they also mostly have ID cards...arguably making illegal immigrants easier to catch.

Yes. Border control is a totally dead concept in modern Europe.

You need to realise that the "Daily Mail headline" entry techniques (50 Vietnamese packed in some container) account for virtually nothing. The other 99% come in overtly, with legal paperwork.

If you don't like it, campaign for the UK to withdraw from the EU.

"In a land where the Bobby has had the authority and power for years to shout "Halt, or I shall yell 'Halt!' again!", perhaps you do need a little education on dealing with terrorism."

Sorry, that's how we do things, and, guess what? We don't seem to get shot (by criminals or by the police shooting at criminals) anywhere near as often over here. Unless you are a Brazilian electrician.

I left Belfast in 1988 to go to university in England. My childhood memories are of bombs going off regularly, guns being pointed at me, checkpoints and searches. That was a fairly middle class experience, It was much worse for many others.
Over 30 years of troubles government measures to restrict freedom were opposed. We did not carry identity cards, and would have resisted all efforts to have this imposed. We got on with our lives, with far less of the current hysteria. As did many people in the mainland. The threat to life was much greater, the terrorists much more intelligent and organised. Over 3000 deaths from a population of 1.25 million in NI =750,000 deaths in the USA pro rata if you do the maths. Don't say 9/11 was more effective.

Call me paranoid but a lot of this fear is created and persisted by government as a means of power over the general populace. The Bush administration know this, and play to it openly. The US has a great history of this, from McCarthyism to today. It is no way to run a country. We are at risk of becoming as bad.

Keep realistic measures going on in the background of course, but please do not jump on the bandwagon of unfounded fears or the terrorists truly will have won.

>Keep realistic measures going on in the background of course, but please do not jump on the bandwagon of unfounded fears or the terrorists truly will have won.<

Gasman

The terorists truly did win. The world has changed dramatically since 9/11, The financial costs have been massive not only in putting together the infrastructure and technology to secure airports but in the billions lost in time wasted at airports not just by holiday makers but more importantly by business.

We have also lost by the lack of freedom and the big brother surveillance that now plagues us.

How much of this is due to genuine concerns about security or as with the green issue where the green issue was used to raise tax through the back door,how much has the security issue been used by Government to legitimise their desire to have a controlled state. Who knows.

The green issue had the government rubbing their hands with glee, of course they were saving the planet not their coffer balance.

Now they have security, of course they are saving us not using this issue for creating the big brother state they desire and may I say creating unproductive jobs to conceil the recession and increasing unemployment rates.

But whatever the terrorists have already won big time.

pace

Not quite. In the United States, we defeated a tyrant and rejected the king. Hardly terrorist. We simply soundly defeated an undesireable oppressive force and chose freedom over subservient domination. A terrorist wages a campain of fear against the general populace. In the United States we simply kicked mother Britain's butt. There is a certain distinction, with no bearing on the activities of Sinn Fein, the IRA, or Al Qaeda, for that matter.

The boston tea party...that was simply a tax protest.

Not yet, but in the lily-skinned protected world in which many live, it must seem so. Visit Lagos, Bagdhad, or Johannesburg to see about terror in your daily life. A security check point and simple precautions to make society safer, and to feel safer, are not signs the terrorists have won. Not yet.

You're already there, mate. You apparently just don't know it yet. Your flying freedoms are not nearly what they are in the US, nor is your aviation. Your ability to own firearms, what we call a constitutional right, is so severely curtailed it's pathetic, with recent descents into the abyss wherein travelers in the UK have been banned for having a picture of a toy gun on their shirt, and what's this we hear of rumblings of knife bans, too? Then again, the US was made independent by citizens who owned firearms, so we do take it as a personal god-given right and responsibility. Fear of the government, with the government, something not heard of in Britain, you say? Hardly.

The bush administration is a laughing stock and not taken seriously by most US citizens. Play to it openly? About as much as Jim Carrey playing openly to a theater full of Shakespeare afficianados. Fear wrought on by the bush administration? Only fear of his next blunder or embarassment. That's enough.

SNS3Guppy - your grasp of life in the UK is a shaky as your grasp of history. Talking of the American Constitution, as you were, perhaps you can tell me this. Where did most of the wording come from?

SN - slightly confused, you chastise us for not taking terrorism as seriously as the USA on this issue, you consider making all flights IFR, yet you tell us that you have much greater flying rights than us- what is it to be?

"Your ability to own firearms, what we call a constitutional right, is so severely curtailed it's pathetic"

Yep, give em guns, tell them they've got a democracy & they will think they are truly free. Just make sure most of them aren't educated enough to work it out. Speaking of democracy, didn't Bush get voted in a second time on the basis of the "war against terror?"?

Pace, I'm afraid I probably agree with you, it saddens me to say:(

Terrorism is impossible to prevent by increased security. As one door closes, another door opens for those with an evil intent.

The terrorist, having made his point, simply moves on to other tactics another time.

What we should always consider is how far we are actually prepared to tie ourselves in knots (or allow our government to do it for us) because of our fear of terrorism.

Guppy, you dont like Britain or us Brits much do you? :hmm:

Do you really think that would solve everything to allow us all fire arms? You may still like to live as if you are in the wild west but we do things a little differently over here, we tend to use our heads and not the trigger. Our college students rarely resort to mass gun massacres when they cant make friends...

Do us all a favour and keep your opinions and advice on matters of national security to yourself, or find an American forum to massage your ego.

When you have something sensible to write about an aviation topic then I'm all ears and will beg to your supreme experience.

The Americans giving other countries advise on the prevention of terrorism and national security! You must be having a laugh, surely?! :} Dear God!