Defence Secretary refuses to rule out airport security scanners for trains
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/2128768/john-healey-huntingdon-reaction-security
Posted by tylerthe-theatre
Defence Secretary refuses to rule out airport security scanners for trains
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/2128768/john-healey-huntingdon-reaction-security
Posted by tylerthe-theatre
35 Comments
Nothing will ever be as effective as the B2s on Bear Patrol
I didn’t realise the defence Secretary had anything to do with that kind of decision
As tragic as the attack on the train this weekend was, is this not a bit of a knee jerk reaction? The chances of it happening again are pretty slim too
You can use your digital id to get on the train
/s
this is stupid, people would have to leave the house 2 hours early to get to work
got on a train today, automated ticket machine and gate. No visible staff members present anywhere in the station.
So based on current rural station staffing I’m presuming the plan is that the terrorist walks through the unmanned security gate, the alarm goes off, and they phone the local counter terrorism task force on themselves.
It’s a bollocks click bait headline. Has anyone suggesting such a thing ever got on a train? There are many hundreds of stations with no staff and no barriers for a start. How would rush hour in busy stations work? We going to get there two hours early like an airport?
There are over 2,500 railway stations in Great Britain. This is a ludicrous, unworkable idea. Not to mention there are workers who carry tools on trains who presumably wouldn’t be allowed to if there was security in place.
You could, of course, limit it to large stations, but then people who wish to carry prohibited items or plan to do harm would just use the smaller stations.
Utterly idiotic.
Yeah with the volume getting on trains each day that ain’t gonna work plus the legal framework just isn’t there either.
I said this before, and I’ll say it again:
This is ludicrous as an idea.
For starters, a security gate needs a security guard or an attendant next to it. You’d need multiple staff for every gate, to allow for mundane things like toilet & lunch breaks.
These security guards would be brand new staff; the current station folk wouldn’t want this extra responsibility. There’d inevitably be instant strikes the minute you even floated the idea.
You’d need power and data running to locations not currently served on the platform. You’d need full fencing up and down the platforms. At every single station on the network. At what point do you think it necessary to re-scan people as they move from a train to a tube?
Airport security isn’t just a metal detector you walk through. You have literal x-ray machines (with more expensively-trained staff!) examining laptops, etc. And procedures to separately check people with implants and wheelchairs and walking sticks. This would work at railway stations how, exactly…?
We can’t stop people hopping through barriers because they don’t want to buy a ticket. That’s now. How will these new magic barriers stop a maniac?
Not to put too fine a point on it, if the desire behind all of this is to reduce the number of people going bananas on public transport, making ten million people a day miss their trains or stand in the rain because Anna doesn’t know her broach is metal or because Brian’s headphones keep triggering the scanner or because Charlie does have a knife in his bag (but he’s a carpet fitter…?) then this will have perhaps the opposite effect.
If there’s money to do this then there’s money for extra police.
Oh boy here we go again a “refuses to rule out article” and an army of people eager to express an opinion
Spain has these on the high speed lines I’ve always wondered why
They had them when I went in on the train in Spain last year for a 10 minute journey. It wasn’t quite airport security but you just took your bag off and put it through the scanner. It was really quick.
As if taking the train wasn’t enough of a pain in the arse already.
I’ll chance a once in 50-years stabbing over taking my shoes and belt off to get the train.
I can’t read the site fully because of all the adverts but just seems like clickbait nonsense.
Of course they’re ‘not ruling them out’ because then if they were ever to put them in in the next 500 years it would be an attack on a policy U-turn but they’re also not saying they’re putting them in.
“Refuses to rule out” is such bollocks headlining. He essentially said that they’ll see what, if anything, needs to be done in response.
And it’s not as if it’s possible anyway, even if they wanted to do it. *Maybe* at stations like Kings Cross, but most stations are not Kings Cross. Look at, say, Fiskerton for an example.
Pretty pointless considering how many stations there are. It would never work.
Warning: as usual it’s in certain big companies interest to make train travel shit for its users. Expect propaganda pushing for this, forcing closure of low use stations cutting the network down pushing more people to cars, taxis, ubers, coaches and busses. Think of the big train companies about to lose their franchise to privatisation that also own bus and coach routes too.
Is it Sunday? This is a typical bullshit Sunday interview comment.
The logistics of such a process are simply beyond practical.
I’ve seen them use these on the subway in China, it seems to work there, in cities with huge populations.
It’s not as stringent as at an airport, but you need to put a backpack through an xray machine and have water bottles tested. Also walk through a metal detector too.
Maybe we shouldn’t go through with the proposal to cut the BTP then…
some kind of security would be nice, it would be nice to know that my train couldn’t become some sort of death trap/meat grinder.
All hail FlixBus.
Though recently after crossing a border a bus I was on stopped at the bus station and nobody was allowed off until the police of the country we’d come from had checked us all. Police of the country we were in were there but just to make some silent point.
I’m this will get pushed, as if I remember correctly the advisor to the last (and presumably this) government on airport security owned a scanning company.
This has to be a click bait headline. As it would be impossible to even install them for the stations on the line where th attack happened. So many are small nothing villages, where will the security and staff magically appear from do these nothing towns?
Just came back from china where they have this measure, including in subway stations.
It’s horrendously cumbersome. It takes forever and it employs people to basically do nothing.
Back before austerity the BTP and the Met police would target some train stations on a Friday/Saturday late afternoon/evening with a portable knife arch. (The first time I saw one I was surprised.)
Oh and since austerity I have seen more and more tradies on public transport including trains with their tools. So they are basically going to ban “working people” who use tools from using public transport to get to work?
How exactly would that work?
Most stations are unmanned.
Yes because the government will fund and staff every train station in the UK to have these security scanners, even the tiny stations served twice a day in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere. 3 staff minimum for the smallest station, 10-15 for larger at least, across the thousands of stations in the UK. Jobs jobs jobs!
This 100% will not happen
Our major stations are fucking shit and rammed to the gills already, could you imagine the utter chaos at Manchester Piccadilly or Euston Station when the platform gets announced 3 minutes before departure and rail staff start trying to body scan hundreds of passengers in a heaving forecourt?
I’d give it about 3 hours until there was a riot
I think this was on the cards and planned anyway – either by traditional mans or by the Digital ID. What do you reckon?
I’ll tell you what.
Trial then at Euston for a week, and if we still think they’re a good idea after that, then you can keep them.
Both of my local stations don’t even have ticket machines let alone the capacity to have airport style scanners 😂
I’ve been pestering for *years* to have a simple ticket machine installed along with a sheltered bench but yeah sure let’s add scanners.
Some of the comments arguing that this would be impossible in the UK are a bit daft really.
It is possible, but perhaps not on every single route (e.g. not at some rural middle of nowhere station in the Highlands), and perhaps it would involve actually having a functioning system which pays people to do jobs.
Of course, this is the UK. We can’t do anything because that would involve doing something, so perhaps it is indeed impossible.
Yes keep infringing on the liberties of the average kind hearted person because that’s definitely the only solution to the atrocious state this country is in, more IDs, more “safety” acts, more surveillance.
What if we actually tried to solve the root cause of the unrest the nation finds itself in, or is it all part of the plan?
This country is becoming a dystopian nightmare created by those who brand the slightest thought of nationalism as racism, despite the former creating what was once a fantastic country to raise a family in.
We’re about to trade more of our freedoms for some warped view of a progression, despite everyone being miserable, scared to leave their homes, and destitute.
The institutions that made the UK what it is are being wrung dry because we can’t be seen to be taking tougher action of the problems that desperately need solving before the country implodes.