things that go bump in the night

When I was younger I often had to walk home at the end of a night out. As I wandered the empty streets in the early hours of the morning, the unwanted thought would pop into my head what happens if I'm the first victim?. Every horror story I've ever read always begins with the EVIL taking it's first victim and then lots of people stand around going I had no idea that there were three thousand year old two headed man eating monsters living in the sewers or so vampires really do exist.

Tony Blair must have these thoughts too. The Sunday Times has an article in it this week about a special report prepared for Tony Blair about the rise of a new generation of angry young British Muslims. Apparently it is suggested that these young people have no connection to known terrorist groups, or even a criminal record, of any sort. They are described as clean skins.

Maybe it is time to start making a tin foil hat, but every time I read stuff like this a little voice in my head screams conspiracy and I have visions of everyone sitting back and allowing the Government to drive a steamroller over our civil liberties. If the Government doesn't know these angry young British Muslims exist, then how do they know they exist? The next step is a small one, and given that we have done it before, it should be a fairly easy one. The Government will need to take steps to protect the country from this less than obvious threat. The recent fiasco around weapons of mass destruction springs to mind. If we can invade another country, think how easy it will be to insist that all Muslims carry an ID card. Don't think for a single second that this will apply only to young angry Muslims, after all this Government would never want to use religion as a basis for acting against a single group of people. That would be discriminatory. No, we will all have to carry ID cards. It will not be long before someone in the Government says some thing about how fortunate we are to have an ID card system in the works because that really will help us stamp out this new breed of terrorists. The only problem I can see is that while the Government is keeping tabs on the bad people, they will also be keeping tabs on the rest of us too.

My advice to Tony is that he should stock up on the garlic too. You know, just in case...

Oh, and I forgot to mention that blaming this stuff on groups of people that we don't know exist, but just might, is a great way to excuse the failure of the security forces to protect us. After all how can you blame anyone for failing to protect us against people they didn't know existed.