Taking security seriously

Authorities in Doncaster airport – aka Robin Hood Airport – have been acting in a way that might have given even the Sheriff of Nottingham pause. Or, at least, shown him how wonderfully easy controlling the peasants would have been if he’d just had the sense to wage The War on Outlawry.

An mildly jokey throw-away tweet line by a frustrated traveller has earned him a criminal record and cost him his job and just under a thousand pounds.

The offending tweet said:

Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!

Note that this was just a tweet, presumably meant to be read by people with enough knowledge of the English language to recognise the normal conversational use of figure of speech. It wasn’t a “threat” delivered to the airport. Obviously the tweeter never imagined that anyone connected with Robin Hood Airport would read it. Nor, guessed that EVEN THOUGH everyone involved on the airport side says they knew full well it wasn’t really a threat, that he would still end up destroyed by it.

Or have terrorists now got into the habit of casually tweeting their intentions?

In that case, the ruination of one ordinary man’s life is a small price to pay for winning the War on Terror. Or the War on Twitter.

Or the War on Photography, even. As, it seems the “potential terrorists” are still up to their old dastardly tricks of taking photographs of well known landmarks. So, it’s a great comfort to us all that the police are still on the ball and stopping professional photographers from getting shots of London buildings.

How thoughtful of the City of London police to keep us safe. Carrying on with the good work of Robin Hood airport. (When you find this post through a google search, Mr Hood, you’ll see how impressed we are with your vigilance. And clearly, you won’t detect any irony, as you don’t recognise figures of speech.)

If imaginary figures can turn in their graves, there’s a man wearing a green hoodie rotating at mach 1 somewhere in the residual bit of Sherwood Forest.

6 thoughts on “Taking security seriously

  1. I’m not a Brit, so I don’t know if the airport’s name is intended to be sarcastic. However, it seems that way. Robin Hood robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. But what happened to the tweeter proves that Robin Hood Airport has reversed that process.

    Still … was the guy completely stupid?

  2. Spanish Inquisitor

    Absolutely.

    Larry

    That really is the name of the airport. Naming airports after famous dead people seems tio have become compulsory. Maybe there was nobody from Doncaster who was famous enough so they picked an imaginary figure. (In any case, this must confuse the hell out of air travellers, who would naturally drive to Nottingham, if they are looking for Robin Hood Airport.)

    Your question “Still … was the guy completely stupid?” seems to be a common reaction. I can’t agree at all. I reckon that I make about 40 verbal hyberbolic threats on a bad day. Noone I speak to imagines that I will suddenly attack them.

    It’s normal to say things like “If you play that tune one more time, I’ll kill you,” in the confident expectation that your friends and family know that you aren’t about to become a homicidal lunatic.
    Why should random chatter on the internet be any different? Must all readers be assumed to taken leave of their senses, and especially of their common sense?

    As Spanish Inquisitor says, being afraid seems to have become a default state. Surely, continuing to live as freely and bravely as we can is the only sane response to terrorism.

  3. Well, of course we shouldn’t have to be afraid of expressing ourselves. Still, “If you play that tune one more time, I’ll kill you” (it was “Kumbaya,” right?) is a hell of a lot different than a threat — even a lamely comical one — to blow up an airport in a week. The guy has to be deaf, dumb, and blind NOT to know that it was a ridiculous thing to say in the current atmosphere.

    So, yeah, he definitely should have the right to say anything the fuck he wants, and I deplore the actions taken by the overly zealous authorities. But, just between us free speech purists, he’s still an idiot.

    By the way: If you don’t start posting more frequently, I’ll kill you.

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