'Covering their backs' - tales of bueaucracy in action

Sir Richard Mottram, the government's security and intelligence co-ordinator, has opined that:

"It would be unreasonable to expect that the security authorities could ever offer absolute protection from the terrorist threat we face."

- now I may be wrong, but I do not recall that this is a charge that has ever seriously been made and is certainly not a view I hold.

I am forced to wonder if the sub-text to this statement before the House of Commons transport committee is not some form of attempt at implicit justification for the shooting of an innocent man, Jean-Charles de Menezes, by our security services in the heightened climate of fear of terrorism in the wake of the bombings of 7th July 2005 (how I feel about that is encapsulated here), and in support of the many anti-democratic measures which this Government has brought into law (or is seeking to pass into law) in apparent furtherance of its very justified public aim of combatting the threat which that terrorism poses to our society. Measures which seek to change fundamentally how we live as a democratic society, whatever outrages may be visited upon us, are not part of the solution - they are part of the problem.