The papers today carry a photo of the man of the moment, the failed Nigerian leg-bomber who tried to blow up a US jet on Christmas Day. Though his attempt was mercifully thwarted, it’s still meant for a new range of over-the-top security measures. A full hour before landing, passengers on US flights now have to sit tight without anything on their lap: no trips to the toilet, no video or music, no newspapers, books, blankets or cushions. All thanks to young Mr Leggy.
The photo the papers are using is from seven years ago, when the unkind leg fetishist was a 16-year-old visiting London, as taken by his teacher. He stares directly at the camera with typical teenage defensiveness, while tugging at the brim of his Nike woollen hat as if to draw attention to the brand. It’s that Nike tick that gets me: the ubiquitous symbol of US corporate domination. I wonder if he’s still got the hat, whether embracing it (‘they’re enemies of Allah, but they still make nice hats.’). Or perhaps he’s inverting the Nike slogan with grim irony: ‘Just Do It’.
Everytime I have to take my shoes off in airports (never Nikes), I think about Richard Reid, the equally thwarted shoe-bomber who nonetheless achieved a petty kind of success: the introduction of those x-ray machines for shoes. Like those soap products from Lush which carry a little cartoon of the staffer who made them, I think of the machines bearing a similar cartoon of Mr Reid. Failed terrorists still get to be choreographers of new inconvenience, and so achieving a small scale victory. Somehow, it feels like those nonsensical instances at school, where teachers would adopt a kind of homeopathy approach to justice. ‘Because one child was naughty on the school trip, we’re never having that trip again. It’s his fault.’Â The measure made no sense to me then, and still doesn’t now.
Similarly, seeing armed policemen at Heathrow never makes me feel safer about being there. Quite the reverse.
