Lillimarleen tells us about “the real state” of national security in the United Kingdom.
According to several news reports Aaron Baarschak, a comedian, crashed Prince William’s 21st birthday party by climbing over a Windsor Castle wall wearing a false beard, a turban and a pink dress. According to newspaper reports, he climbed on the stage, took the microphone from the Prince and began a stand-up comedy performance, and later even kissed the Prince on the cheek while drinking champagne before security realised he was not exactly invited.
Now the British home secretary will have to explain to Parliament tomorrow how that could happen and why it can never happen again…
Here’s my cliffnote for David Blunkett – don’t bother.
People entering “secure” areas without proper security clearance happens all the time, works all the time. It cost me five minutes to explain to a nice female police officer in NYC last year that I had to get into the sealed off UN area to meet a friend at the Finnish embassy… [which was true and I never intened to do anything but meeting her, so said officer made – though not formally – the right decision to let me in] and in Britain, even in September 2001, there were a lot of people who joked that the only thing 911 had changed with respect to security in the Westminster was that before, one person did not check security clearances – now there are two of them…
And don’t forget the guy who is on most European head of state summit photographs, just for the fun of it [and for reminding the world that European heads of state don’t actually know all their counterparts…].