For no good reason except numerology, this is posted at exactly 09:09 on 09/09/09 .

Useless, but fun.

Just to add to my general joyous demeanour, there’s also news today that my train route is going to be hit by a week-long strike from 21st September. It turns out that ASLEF’s workers have rejected the deal offered by National Express East Anglia (and written about by me here) so the strikes are back on.

What I still don’t understand is what ASLEF et al expect to get out of these strikes. Any support or sympathy they might’ve got from people (and let’s bear in mind that passengers get treated abysmally by NEEA too, not just the staff) is going to be wiped out by the strike action affecting everyone for a week.

People might have a bit more sympathy and/or understanding if they knew just what ASLEF/RMT were demanding as a deal for their drivers, and/or what NEEA had offered in return. But neither organisation has either the common sense or the PR knowledge to do that.

So instead, assuming I’m still working on the current contract, I’m going to be going in to London by car instead of train. I’m going to angle for doing some work from home as well, which would be nice – although I’m not yet convinced it’ll happen. But it should make for an interesting week…

I still find it hard to understand the certainty of the Government and Security Forces that terrorist attacks will happen again on aeroplanes. Maybe they know something I don’t.

To me, security – or at least the perception of security – comes about through making easy targets into harder targets. When it comes to home security, we don’t look at making our houses completely thief-proof. We look at making them into a harder target than my neighbours.

In my opinion, people in general – whether it be your everyday office worker, a burglar, a politician, or a terrorist – are lazy. They’re not going to do something difficult if they can do something easy.

On the terrorism front, airports are (in theory at least) the hardest target around now. Bear in mind though that I’m still a firm believer in ‘Security Theatre‘ – so airports at least appear to be the hardest target. They’re certainly more hassle than (for example) sitting on a bus or a train.

So I find it hard to understand that conviction that planes are still the prime target. Personally I’d probably be trying to look at anything but planes and airports.