Convenience Big Store: It’s bonkers to confiscate nail scissors

10 September, 2021

In the headlines

Tory support has dipped to its lowest level since the election. In a YouGov poll following the announcement of tax rises to fund the NHS and social care, backing for the Conservatives fell five points to 33%. Labour is now on 35%, up one point and in the lead for the first time since January. The Taliban's victory in Afghanistan has "emboldened" terrorists in Britain, the head of MI5, Ken McCallum, told Radio 4's Today this morning. Thirty-one "late stage" attack plots have been foiled in the UK in the past four years, including six since the start of the pandemic. The first black lord-lieutenant for London says he has discussed "the whole issue of race" with the royal family. Asked whether the Queen supported the Black Lives Matter movement, Sir Ken Olisa said: "The answer is easily yes."

Comment of the day

Passengers at security in Denver airport. Robert Alexander/Getty Images

It's bonkers to confiscate nail scissors

I recently had my nail scissors confiscated by security before boarding a flight to LA, says Adam Creighton in The Australian. Which is ridiculous – America has spent more than $2 trillion on counterterrorism in the 20 years since 9/11, but statistics show that a person would have to fly "every day for 30,000 years before being involved in a terrorist attack". Nor has all that spending calmed nerves. In 2016, 15 years after the Patriot Act vastly expanded US government surveillance, nearly three in four Americans said the risk of terrorist attack on the US by foreigners was greater or the same.

All the same mistakes are resurfacing in our response to Covid-19, "the biggest over-reaction in history". Governments leap into action, then are reluctant to repeal knee-jerk policies, partly because they've ploughed billions into their big plans – the "sunk-cost fallacy is endemic". No authorities ever properly examine the terrorism risk because "the answer would raise awkward questions for the security-industrial complex that profits handsomely from these arrangements". It's the same with Covid. As George Orwell wrote: "The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous." We could still be handing over our nail scissors, double-masked, 20 years from now. "God help us if there's another crisis on the horizon."

You can't send soldiers to build a nation

The fall of Kabul is a lesson, says Max Hastings in Bloomberg. In all wars since Vietnam, the US has imposed a "heavy, self-harming footprint". Cluttering the place up with air bases, razor wire, blast walls and low-flying helicopters, and wearing sunglasses and helmets that make soldiers look like "Darth Vader's stormtroopers", cripples the western cause even before anybody starts shooting. Our troops set themselves apart as "aliens", while local people see our enemies as "folks like themselves". We never seriously addressed the root causes of radicalism in Afghanistan: poor education, lack of opportunity and a sense of exclusion. And we lost the moral high ground through our behaviour in places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

"Every age has its follies," said the Italian strategy guru Antonio Giustozzi. "The folly of our age has been an irresistible desire to change the world without first studying and understanding it." The centralised Kabul government established by Washington was wrong for a country loosely run by shifting networks of tribal and family interests. We sent soldiers, whose special skill is killing people, to build a nation. Next time, why not send plumbers or web designers? Yet despite all these mistakes and failures, the US remains indispensable. We can lament America's confusion of foreign policy and military strategy since 9/11 without being foolish enough to cry: "Yanks go home!"

Inside politics

Last week the gossip newsletter Popbitch reported rumours that Michael Gove had joined the dating app Bumble. This week it has more proof. "I can confirm Michael Gove is on Bumble – I matched with him," wrote one anonymous reader. "To make sure it was him, I asked him to take a selfie holding up that day's newspaper and he did."

On the money

A white gyrfalcon has been auctioned in Saudi Arabia for a record price of £337,400. The 42cm-long bird of prey was bred in the US and sold on Sunday at the International Falcon Breeders Auction near the capital, Riyadh. Hunting with falcons is a prestigious pursuit across the Middle East – Vladimir Putin presented King Salman of Saudi Arabia with a white gyrfalcon, the largest of the species, in 2019, and elite falconers often fly their birds around the region in business-class seats.

Quirks of history

Joseph Heller's hit novel Catch-22 was rejected 22 times. "I haven't really the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say," said one publisher. "Apparently the author intends it to be funny – possibly even satire – but it is really not funny on any intellectual level."

Snapshot

Tomorrow's world

In Singapore, a new fleet of robots is cracking down on "undesirable social behaviours", says Mashable. Four-wheeled boxes named Xavier scan for infractions such as smoking in the wrong spot, locking a bike up improperly and flouting Covid restrictions by gathering in groups of five or more. The bots then snitch to the local police station.

Noted

Afghanistan's last Jew has left the country, says AP News. Zebulon Simentov, who lived alone in "a dilapidated synagogue" in Kabul, survived decades of war as the country's centuries-old Jewish community – 40,000 in the late 19th century – dwindled away. The 62-year-old and 29 of his Afghan neighbours were evacuated on a bus arranged by an Israeli businessman.

Snapshot answer

It's a late-night, flood-lit army parade in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, celebrating the nation's 73rd anniversary on September 9. The show of military might featured soldiers in orange hazmat suits and gas masks, as well as fighter jets and missiles towed by tractors.