How ineffectual is the British Library bag search? You may be wondering why the British Library has a bag search at all. You might imagine that it is not exactly the number one target for terrorist attacks. Apparently, the reason for the bag search is that the library is in such close proximity to St Pancras station that it makes it the ideal place from which to detonate a really big bomb. That there are no other bag searches in any other buildings in close proximity to St Pancras station, that indeed there is no bag search to go into St Pancras station itself unless you are taking the Eurostar, is an irrelevance. Anyway, there is a bag search, which I suppose by the above logic would make the British Library the safest building in the King's Cross area, were the bag search of any use whatsoever. That it is in fact completely desultory is illustrated by the following: on the way into the library the other day I had my overnight bag with me, including a sponge bag full of toileteries. The security guard opened my overnight bag, felt the closed sponge bag without opening it, and said, "Lunch?"LUNCH? Who carries their lunch in a sponge bag? A sponge bag that is in the same bag with a pair of pyjamas and some clean underwear? How unobservant is this security guard? How lacking in common sense, and even a basic bit of curiosity? When I said "Er, no", without elaborating on what was actually in the sponge bag, he just handed it back. He didn't even look inside to make sure that it wasn't lunch-shaped bomb-making equipment. If you're going to have a bag search, at least open the bags!
(It occurs to me as I write this that the secirity guard might have been asking me if I wanted to have lunch with him, but I don't want to eat meals with a security guard with no sense of security.)
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4 comments:
If you go to the BL's other public sites (the Colindale newspaper library, and Boston Spa in West Yorkshire), you're also supposed to be subject to a bag search. Or, at least, you'll see a big sign telling you to prepare yourself for one. I'm not sure what the BL's security rationale is for those locations.
With that said, I've never actually been searched at Colindale or Boston Spa. Which speaks to a certain level of common sense in the organisation.
A friend tells me she has received several free meals - an apple crumble among them - from a BL catering person who has taken a shine to her. Perhaps you shouldn't take lunch in with you at all, just bat your eyelids in the vicinity of the canteen.
Wyndham
It may have been a euphemism.
Curious. I'll have to suggest this method of confusing patrons to my own library board.
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