This was nearly a Darwin Award post.

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Powder bombs at Blair trigger security fear at British parliament

Britain’s parliament was evacuated for more than an hour after harmless purple powder was hurled from the public gallery at Prime Minister Tony Blair in a dramatic breach of security.

Two men were arrested on the spot and taken into custody Wednesday, police said, as Fathers 4 Justice, a group well-known for using high-profile stunts to press its case for fathers’ rights, claimed responsibility.

The powder bombs — apparently made of coloured flour, packed inside two balloons — was lobbed at Blair from a public gallery to his rear, about 20 minutes into his weekly half-hour question period.

Color me unsympathetic towards the people that did this, to put it mildly. These days the sudden appearance of suspicious-looking powder in a public place is guaranteed to cause panic, if not a stampede. Someone could have very easily gotten hurt from this; in fact, I’m mildly surprised that the yahoos that did this weren’t shot.

And if they had been shot, I wouldn’t have faulted the security forces for that, although I do want to know how said yahoos got the stuff past them in the first place.

(Via Citizen Smash)

13 thoughts on “This was nearly a Darwin Award post.”

  3. It’s the layout, Gary. The layout is driving potential readers crazy.
    That, and the color scheme. Only a Florida State fan could love that. The soothing baby-blue borders here are much more friendly.

  4. What do you think, specifically, should be improved about my blog’s layout?
    I’ve actually been thinking about moving to a new three column one.
    The two obstacles are a) my overwhelming lack of any knowledge of HTML beyond a few tags — I don’t know how to work with tables, for instance — and I’m not really so fascinated by the topic as to wish to invest a significant amount of time in learning much more; and b) my fear that moving everything in an acceptable way would be Very Very Very time-consuming.
    On the other hand, if it would make a significant difference in number of readers — particularly those inclined to comment, hint, hint — that would certainly strengthen the case for my, sigh, Doing The Work.

  5. “And if they had been shot, I wouldn’t have faulted the security forces for that, although I do want to know how said yahoos got the stuff past them in the first place.”
    Lucky for us they didn’t get shot. We would have to endure weeks of Guardian hand-wringing about how facist the government had become.

  6. Woo. . Gary. . tables.
    If you’re just getting into it now, avoid that and look into CSS.
    If you’d like you can email me a rough description of the end goal and I can put together the tags.

  7. Call it the Great British Tradition of not casually shooting people. Definitely a winning strategy, in a culture where the vast majority of people don’t even own a gun, much less carry one.
    Sebastian, have you ever lived in the UK? I have, and I can tell you that it’s not just “Guardian readers” who think that the British traditions of unarmed police, few guns, and a low murder rate are a good thing. Seriously, if the two idiots who did this had been shot, no one would have come out a winner. Because they weren’t shot, everyone who deserves to comes out a winner – and even the two idiots who threw the bag of purple flour are at least alive to tell the tale of how they got it past security in the first place, and to reflect that idiot stunts like these are why their wives divorced them in the first place.

  8. Someone could have very easily gotten hurt from this; in fact, I’m mildly surprised that the yahoos that did this weren’t shot.
    <dry British wit>Over here we tend to find that keeping people alive allows us to interrogate them more effectively.</dry British wit>
    It seems pretty much no one here in the UK is sympathetic towards them, and they’ve done their cause and their organisation no favours at all. As former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith pointed out, however, clearing the chamber after a possible toxic attack was hardly the best way to contain it.
    Oh, and Gary, the changes look good. And I believe I beat you to blogging this issue; though of course you may have been in the middle of your weekly two-hour sleep session; and besides it hardly matters since, in blogging terms, next to Amygdala (and ObWings) I’m a mere tear in a quark’s eye.

  10. “and a low murder rate are a good thing” hmm someone is still comparing 70s murder rates. 🙂
    What makes you think that, Sebastian? In the year 2000, the homicide rate in the US was 5.64 per 10 000. In Scotland, it was 2.11, and in England/Wales it was 1.61. (cite – warning, PDF file) There are only 10 states in the US with a lower homicide rate than Scotland, and only 5 with a lower homicide rate than England/Wales. You need to inform yourself of modern statistics by looking at the actual reports, Sebastian. They may be on PDF files, but they’re there to be read.

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