That Clarkson 'Gaffe'

The Mail is describing this from Jeremy Clarkson as a gaffe.

'Nobody is waved through any more. Immigration officials are not allowed to use their discretion,' he said.

'Common sense has been erased from the system. And the result is plain for all to see. There's a two-hour wait. And come the Olympics they're saying that time frame will double.

'Net result: Immigration officials have to assume that the nice family of four coming back from their holiday in Sardinia is going to cheat the social out of millions then blow up during the 100 metres final.'

'Nobody likes a racist. Nobody likes prejudice. It has no place at work, at play or on the terraces of a football stadium. It has no place at school, or in government.

'But at Heathrow airport? Hmmm.'

Predictably, he has been condemned by organisations which are wrong on just about every other issue, too.

However, a spokesman for the Public and Commercial Services Union, which represents Border Force workers, said: 'Clarkson is an idiot.'

Presumably, they'd also consider their highly-successful and efficient counterparts in Israel as 'idiots' too.

Despite facing dozens of potential threats each day, the security set-up at Israel's largest hub, Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport, has not been breached since 2002, when a passenger mistakenly carried a handgun onto a flight. How do they manage that?

"The first thing you do is to look at who is coming into your airport," said Sela.

The first layer of actual security that greets travellers at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport is a roadside check. All drivers are stopped and asked two questions: How are you? Where are you coming from?

"Two benign questions. The questions aren't important. The way people act when they answer them is," Sela said.

Officers are looking for nervousness or other signs of "distress" — behavioural profiling. Sela rejects the argument that profiling is discriminatory.

"The word 'profiling' is a political invention by people who don't want to do security," he said. "To us, it doesn't matter if he's black, white, young or old. It's just his behaviour. So what kind of privacy am I really stepping on when I'm doing this?"

Feel free to read the rest of an article which openly ridicules the Neanderthal approach to security employed across the Atlantic and, by extension, us.

By contrast, Israel takes account of profiling - which Clarkson was alluding to - in delivering a service which benefits everyone.

The goal at Ben-Gurion is to move fliers from the parking lot to the airport lounge in a maximum of 25 minutes.

Idiots, obviously.

If an airport in the heart of a country considered target number one by extremists - and right on their doorstep to boot - can use intelligence to solve the problem of airport security, why can't we?

The answer is partly in the PCS union's response. They dismiss any thought of profiling in preference to checking absolutely everyone as Clarkson describes. In doing so, they are implicitly stating that they're not confident enough in their members' ability to spot true risk passengers as opposed to the family travelling to, or from, Sardinia.

Either that, or protecting jobs which might prove unnecessary under a more enlightened security regime at the expense of all passengers who indirectly pay the wages.

I suppose you could make a case that political correctness has instilled the requirement of all unions to instantly dismiss any talk of profiling, but that just makes things worse.

Whichever way you cut it, the only 'idiots' are those who carry on with a system which is not fit for purpose, instead of one which does the job without making our airports a self-inflicted national embarrassment.

Pointing out the collective stupidity of politicians, airport security managers, and unions resistant to innovative solutions isn't really a 'gaffe'.

More like a public service, I'd say.