Il segretario alla Difesa rifiuta di escludere gli scanner di sicurezza aeroportuali per i treni

I didn’t realise the defence Secretary had anything to do with that kind of decision

You can use your digital id to get on the train

/s

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.

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.

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.

Spain has these on the high speed lines I’ve always wondered why 

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.

“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.

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.

I’ve seen them use these on the subway in China, it seems to work there.

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.