VACUUM SECURITY

the vacuum

SECURITY

SECURITY

the vacuum

the vacuum THE VACUUM

HOME SECURITY Myself: What quality of the plurality of domiciliary buildings do we proverbially value?

The Plain People of Belfast: Why are you talking in that peculiar way? And who are you calling ‘plain’?

Myself: I’m trying to imitate Myles na Gopaleen’s ‘Dictionary of Cliché’.

The Beautiful People of Belfast: That’s better.

But ‘safe as houses’ isn’t really a proverb any more.

Myself: Do tell.

The Beautiful People of Belfast: Well friends of friends of ours were burgled there just a wee while ago: DVD player, stereo, paintings, all gone.

The PSNI were next to useless of course.

Myself: Dearie me. Though it’s not really a bad enough story to disprove the proverb.

The Beautiful People of Belfast: Ahh, but wait till you hear the rest of it.

Myself: Press on, do.

The Beautiful People of Belfast: Well, of course, it was a terrible shock to them, so the next night they thought they deserved a treat and went out for a meal.

Myself: So the insurance came through quickly then, eh?

The Beautiful People of Belfast: Don’t be a cynic. Anyway, do you know what happened next?

Myself: I may just have an inkling where this is headed.

The Beautiful People of Belfast: They came home to find that the burglars had been back.

Myself: Well, you can’t fault their work rate.

The Beautiful People of Belfast: Don’t be facetious. This time they took the furniture – tables, chairs, beds, rugs …

Myself: Yes, I think I know what furniture is.

The Beautiful People of Belfast: We’ve already warned you about being facetious. If that’s going to be your attitude, we won’t tell you the rest.

Myself: Apologies – do please press on.

The Beautiful People of Belfast: Very well, but no more of your old nonsense. Well, anyway, it so happened that these friends …

Myself: I though they were friends of friends?

The Beautiful People of Belfast: Haven’t you ever heard of narrative economy? Anyway, these friends, or (archly) friends of friends if you must, had planned a weekend away and were very glad of it after the shock, we can tell you. But, you’ll never guess what they found when they got home.

Myself: Nothing?

The Beautiful People of Belfast: No, well yes, I suppose so. The whole house had been gutted: carpets taken up, doors off and away, white goods, the lot, all gone. So where’s your safe as houses now?

Myself: Well, I don’t think that disproves that ‘safe as houses’ is a proverb, though it does suggest that we need to update Myles and institute the Dictionary of Urban Myths, because that’s a story I first heard in London in the 1980s and do you know something?

The Beautiful People of Belfast: What?

Myself: It wasn’t true then either.

The Beautiful People of Belfast: Are you saying we’re lying? Because we’ve got better things to do than stand around here all day being insulted.

Myself: Mmmm, yes, you could be at home, keeping it safe from burglars.

The Beautiful People of Belfast: Now you’re

just being ridiculous. And you’ve avoided our question – are you calling us liars?

Myself: Not exactly, but I am saying that your narrative is a response to changing social circumstances determinately related to economic developments.

The Beautiful People of Belfast: Jeezus H. How can you say something the like of that without breaking your jaw? And, anyway, are you calling us liars or what?

Myself: Let me explain.

The Beautiful People of Belfast: Go on then, but less of the jawbreakers.

Myself: Well, house prices have been going up quite a lot, yes?

The Beautiful People of Belfast: (rubbing hands gleefully) We should say so, made a packet on our last place.

Myself: And people are beginning to move into areas that they wouldn’t have thought about before?

The Beautiful People of Belfast: Well, as it happens we’ve just bought a lovely old house in East Belfast, very reasonably priced given the size of it, and solidly built too, not like these new overpriced boxes that you see everywhere.

Myself: So, some of the older forms of community are beginning to change; people no longer know as much about their neighbours as they once did.

The Beautiful People of Belfast: That’s not so: our neighbours are lovely, rough diamonds perhaps, but lovely, a bit noisy at times and the son’s a bit of a tearaway mind you, but what would you expect at his age, and, really, they’re the salt of the earth.

Myself: Aren’t you protesting a bit too much?

The Beautiful People of Belfast: (looking around & whispering) Well, we think he, the husband, may have had some, y’know, (even quieter whisper) paramilitary connections. Mind you, that can be useful: he was very helpful when we had a wee bit of a problem with some of the local lads.

(Normal voice) But, he’s the salt of the earth, really.

Myself: But not quite your sort?

The Beautiful People of Belfast: Oh, now … well, that’s a wee bit strong. We wouldn’t necessarily have them round for drinks (thinking) though they seemed a bit off when we didn’t invite them to the housewarming, and it can get a bit embarrassing always having to find reasons why we can’t go round to theirs every time they ask.

Myself: So, not your sort, after all.

The Beautiful People of Belfast: Well, we’re just different; it’d be a boring old world if we were all the same. You know what they say about variety.

Myself: Yes, it’s one of the oldest clichés. But, tell me how does his difference manifest itself ?

The Beautiful People of Belfast: Well, he doesn’t seem to do any regular work – in and out at all hours, and his van can block the pavement at times.

Myself: And I’m sure you’re like an open book to him?

The Beautiful People of Belfast: To be honest, we reckon they’re a bit puzzled by us, don’t quite understand the whole thing about working from home, and, of course, being freelance means you can make your own hours to a large extent: one of the perks.

Myself: Yes, I can see the difference quite clearly now.

By Eamonn Hughes

The Beautiful People of Belfast: But we still haven’t sorted out that whole thing about you calling us liars.

Myself: All I meant was that in these changing times … house prices up the left … breakdown of communities … lots of incomers who don’t know the local people and their ways … ignorance leads to suspicion and fearfulness … and suddenly urban myths about your own home not being safe start to circulate.

The Beautiful People of Belfast: Hang on a minute – you’re saying we’re SNOBS. Myself: Oh dear, there’s the ring-back, my taxi’s here; must dash.

The Beautiful People of Belfast: Myles na Gopaleen was funnier than you, anyway.

THE VACUUM

BODYGUARDS

By Paul Moore You’re nobody these days unless you have a bodyguard. I had a good indication of this a few weeks ago when on a long haul flight to the newly trendy destination of Namibia in southern Africa.

Ironically it is trendy because of the decision of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt to have their baby born there on the grounds that it was a place where they could be anonymous and not need a constant bodyguard but their decision will mean that all the rest of us will need continual protection.

On the plane journey to Namibia I noticed a fairly well known model travelling in business class and she seemed to be travelling alone. My naivety was rewarded on arrival at our destination with the spectacle of the said model striding out followed by an entourage of bodyguards and equally model-like females carrying her Louis Vuitton cases. Why she needed the said bodyguards I do not know since no one was paying her a blind bit of notice and if the historical behaviour of models is anything to go by it could well be the general public that need protection. The major contradiction in all of this, of course, is that the model would no doubt claim she needed protection from the paparazzi, the very industry that made her a name in the first place.

Like many I also had occasion to witness the bodyguards appointed to protect the American president during President Clinton’s visit a few years back. I was working in a college it was rumoured he would visit and a few weeks before he arrived a hoard of well-dressed, chiselled young men descended on the college checking everything from doors to sewers. Evidently the sewers caused them some consternation because they were consequently sealed. The most interesting facet of the behaviour

'Big Mon Bans Brawling Boozers'. Fiona Ni Mhaoilir

of this presidential vanguard, however, was their capacity to continually talk up their own sleeves.

It emerged that this was where their walkie-talkies were hidden but it has to be said discrete it was not.

'bouncer bitch asserts dresscode policy'.

Fiona Ni Mhaoilir

Research into these individuals revealed that most were high-flying graduates of either Yale or Harvard who were the cream of their bodyguard generation, being courageous, academically brilliant and fluent in at least four languages. With Bill Clinton this seems acceptable but with Bush? Surely a tad over the top in the intellectual stakes here? There is a school of thought which claims that President Bush’s recent microphone gaff which has become known as the ‘Yo Blair ‘exchange has been misreported. It is suggested that the President was actually shouting Yojimbo, the Japanese word for bodyguard since he thought he was being attacked by an alien head of state. This tells us a great deal about President Bush and little about the so-called special relationship between the UK and the USA.) This stereotypical USA bodyguard stands in interesting contrast to the British notion, which is more Vinnie Jones than the aforementioned Brad Pitt but then, perhaps, we like our protectors to actually look as though they have gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson after he decided ear-biting was an essential part of his make-up. In Britain, therefore, Tyson would have ended up as a bodyguard rather than needing one. And of course Northern Ireland

is littered with figures who started out in a protective role before accepting various forms of office which included a bodyguard as part of the remuneration package. Essentially this is why we feel so safe in this country. We know that around every corner there is a bodyguard in the making or one that that has just moved on from that hallowed position to stalk the empty corridors of power.

Bodyguards it seems feel that they have been given a poor press, although if one of your duties is to stuff cameras down the throats of the paparazzi this is not entirely surprising. It seems that the term bodyguard is not even something they like very much, choosing instead to refer to themselves as ‘close protection officers’. For the record they are highly trained in armed and unarmed combat, tactical driving (I assume this has nothing to do with golf) and first aid, presumably administered to those who have been unfortunate enough to enter the close protection zone. And should we be reassured by the boast that most close protection officers are former police officers particularly since little or no evidence is offered as to how the state of ‘formerness’ actually came about.

On a more philosophical level the idea of a bodyguard seems somewhat incongruous. The point at which such a service is necessary is reached when one has gained a reputation as something of a big noise. This apparently makes you a target.

But in order to become a big noise one would have to have made a few enemies and been tough if not ruthless in one’s dealings. On reaching the pinnacle of success does one then turn into some kind of shrinking violet who needs some other person to look after them? It is not surprising that on many occasions the bodyguard before long becomes the important person. Et tu Brute, Mykola Mel’nychenko, Satwant Singh, Beant Singh and all that!

Whatever we might say we are fascinated by the idea of the bodyguard, as is evidenced by movies such as In the Line of Fire, The Bodyguard, The Human Target, Man on Fire and the television series The Bodyguards. My own finest moment came a few years ago when I was to speak at an event the then Minister of Education Martin McGuinness was also speaking at. As we lined up outside to be introduced to guests as they arrived an oldish, gentlemanly figure shook hands with those in the line but as he came to me he walked on past saying ‘And you must be Mr McGuinness’ minder!’ My colleagues were horrified. I, however, remained studiously aloof and enigmatic in the way that only true close protection officers can, thinking to myself ‘Arthur Daley would be proud of me!’

Diston@ The Front Page Saturday 23rd September Tim Wright (Tube Jerk) Live (Sativae, Novamute) Boxcutter Live (Planet mu, hotflush) With DJs: Nez, a simmer tone and iso9

www.diston.org www.planet-mu.com www.timwrightmusic.com

the vacuum THE VACUUM

By Celia Argento Much of the information that is held by governments is sensitive for one reason or another, and so efforts are made to protect such information from becoming publicly available. One way is to mark information with a protective marking. Everyone who has ever seen a James Bond film is familiar with the highest protective marking, Top Secret, but there are three other markings (in descending order of seriousness): Secret, Confidential and Restricted. These markings are graded according to the degree of damage that would be caused should the information be compromised.

else, you get a laminated photo ID in fetching yellow and black (marked rather like the danger warning signal of a wasp) bearing your photograph. Once in possession of one of these must-have items, you can waft into the House, waving it before you, swatting tourists out of the way, and shunning the X-ray machines designed to penetrate every last corner of your baggage. You are part of the ‘in’ crowd, dependable and trustworthy. The policemen smile and nod at you. Of course in these rather more suspicious times, it has become harder and harder to get these passes, and it was announced that even those working on Bills and requiring regular access to the House would not be allowed one, unless requiring access several times a week over an extended period. Not even MPs attend that often.

Civil servants who deal with the most sensitive types of information, eg those in the security services, or in the Foreign Office, are subject to much more rigorous security testing. Research is carried out into their background, and also their family and friends.

Interviews take place with close friends, sometimes on an annual basis, to ascertain whether there is anything about that person that might make them a security risk. Of particular interest is anything which could make that person susceptible to pressure or blackmail, which could lead to them being more likely to compromise information in order to protect themselves. So questions are asked about any alcohol or drug habits, financial difficulties, or sexual peccadilloes. The moral is, choose which friend you nominate as your referee carefully. Either one who doesn’t really know you at all, or one who is good at keeping schtum. NB – coming from Belfast doesn’t help.

Top Secret – exceptionally grave damage to the nation For example, the compromise of this information or material would be likely to threaten directly the internal stability of the UK or friendly countries, or to lead directly to widespread loss of life.

Secret – serious injury to the interests of the nation For example, the compromise of this information or material would be likely to raise international tension, or to threaten life directly, or seriously prejudice public order, or individual security or liberty.

Confidential – prejudicial to the interests of the nation For example, the compromise of this information or material would be likely to materially damage diplomatic relations (i.e. cause formal protest or other sanction), or to prejudice individual security or liberty Restricted – undesirable in the interests of the nation The compromise of this information or material would be likely to affect diplomatic relations adversely, or to cause substantial distress to individuals.

The award of a marking is made simply on the basis of the judgement of the person who has created the document. Now that the Freedom of Information Act 2000 is in force, if a member of the public requests disclosure of information subject to a protective marking, the protective marking does not of itself mean that the information cannot be disclosed. Only information which falls within the specific exemptions provided for in the Act is exempt from disclosure.

Protective markings might indicate that one of the exemptions may apply, for example, the information may relate to national security or defence or international relations, but the markings themselves are not determinative of the issue.

However, the Act only applies to information held by the Government. Not information which has been held. So, if at the time of the request, the information is no longer held, then it does not have to be produced. This led to official advice, given just before the Act came into force, to dispose of documents which might cause difficulties if they were the subject of an FOI request. It is an offence to dispose of information after a FOI request has been made, but not before. Therefore, if unflattering and potentially libellous comments are made in respect of a member of the public in a written memo, for example, it is prudent to ensure that this document is disposed of rather than preserved for posterity. Only the very foolish make such remarks in an email. These are practically impossible to destroy. The more IT literate among you will be aware that simply pressing the delete button is woefully insufficient.

Leaks do not always come from disgruntled or socially concerned civil servants. Practically every ‘restricted’ piece of work I have ever laid eyes on has ended up in the papers. One item I had been dealing

Civil servants have to have integrity, in order to be trusted with state secrets and sensitive information. with for some time resulted in private Ministerial correspondence. Over the weekend following that correspondence, the main letter was quoted verbatim in the Sunday papers, accompanied by appropriately screaming headlines. On Monday, my boss came to see me and warned me that there might be a leak inquiry. She said that I shouldn’t be unduly alarmed if I was asked if I had let the correspondence out of my sight. Then she went on to say that if there was no leak inquiry, that meant that it was a Government leak. There was no leak inquiry. I’ve never come across a leak inquiry, and I don’t know anyone else who has either. Draw your own conclusions.

More serious consequences flow from breach of the Official Secrets Act 1989, whereby unauthorised leaks of information causing damage to the public interest are punishable by the criminal law. Civil servants are bound by the Act. Damage to the public interest does not include mere political embarassment, however. Rather, the Act specifies categories of protected information, such as security and intelligence, defence, and international relations.

Most information dealt with by civil servants falls outside these categories. There are innumerable other statutes however which contain traps for the unwary - provisions concerning the disclosure of information, some carrying civil penalties for unauthorised disclosure, others criminal penalties.

Getting into a Government building has become

more of a tricky business since the aftermath of 9/11.

The ‘security’ barriers in my own Department used to simply be a row of turnstiles, like the kind protecting the entrance to public pay as you go toilets. Obviously a similar level of security was required. They could easily be vaulted over, or slid under. There was an invasion of protestors once into the lobby, but they didn’t seem able to work out that the turnstiles didn’t offer much in the way of resistance to a determined invasion. The turnstiles have long ago been traded in. Departments now have a bewildering variety of security barriers and measures. My own personal favourite is the Star Trek type, which is a glass cylinder, with back and front doors that slide open only one at a time. So the front door opens, you step inside, and the door closes behind you, trapping you inside for a few seconds before you are released. They brighten up an otherwise dull start to the day, you can pretend you’re being beamed up to a better place. Yes, a civil servant’s life is that dull. The level of security for a building doesn’t necessarily relate to the importance of the work that goes on inside. Some Departments just seem to have had a big budget to play with, so they’ve got the most robust options.

Other Departments seem content to rely simply on an emphysemic pensioner wearing a uniform ‘policing’ the entrance.

Civil servants have to have integrity, in order to be trusted with state secrets and sensitive information.

All are subject to basic security checks on joining.

Some areas of work may require higher levels of security checks. If you are working on something requiring regular access to the Houses of Parliament, you have to apply for a higher level of security check, and if successful you are rewarded with a pass. The pass is like magic. Instead of having to traipse round to Black Rod’s entrance (much less exciting than it sounds) and queue up for a tatty strip of paper which permits access to the officials’ areas, but precious little

THE VACUUM

package) and they have gave me the option of transferring the account to two other people, if anyone is thinking of joining a gym LA fitness is excellent, with a pool, free exercise classes free exercise plans, Jacuzzi, steam room, sauna and excellent changing facilities.

The account is Gold membership which allows you access to all areas of the club at any time.

Park Centre!). The alternative, I was informed, was to take a Donegal Road bus, get off at the top of the Donegal Road and walk the rest of the way in the pouring rain. I had to walk back because even the bus driver could not tell me the timetable for the return journey. Leisure centres are not just used for fitness activities, but if they are as difficult to reach as this I shall not be back.

Confessions of a Security Guard

. Edyth.

by Stephen Caves (the Caveman)

The cost is £65.95 per month for the joint membership, which works out well if you use it often.

The club is located on Adelaide street , Belfast.

Thanks, Tim

-----Original Message----Sent: 10 March 2006 11:50 To: All BCC Subject: RE: GYM MEMBERSHIP Hello Everyone - somewhat amusing as this subject may now be - PLEASE can the debate stop you guys are clogging up our e-mails.

-----Original Message----Sent: 10 March 2006 10:25 To: All BCC Subject: RE: GYM MEMBERSHIP

Poor Timothy - sure you’re not too popular at the minute look at what you’ve started and all you wanted was to transfer your membership. I’ll go back if I were you - due to the tension this subject has caused....

If anyone is interested please respond to this e-mail or contact me on extension no 2568 for more details.

In order to demonstrate the ease with which governmental security can be breached The Vacuum enlisted the help of an undercover operative to prove the point. Easily circumventing the woefully inadequate measures on Belfast City Council’s outdated system, our man was able to gain sensitive information pertaining to the mechanisms of local government. We feel it is in the public interest to publish a selection of his findings. These take the form of cross-departmental correspondence between lower level agents of the Statelet.... .]

Someone this morning has lost some unused postal stamps. If you think you might be the victim then come and see me! You will need a utility bill and photographic ID. [Followed by Stamps have been reclaimed!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Would anyone have any use for some Belfast City badges?

I have a box of about 2000 metal badges with Belfast City and a smiley face on them - they have been here some time and are free to a good home.

Let me know.

Thanks Paula

[Followed by

All the Belfast City Badges have now been allocated.

Paula ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------This morning there was a tray in the kitchen with tea, coffee and packets of biscuits on it which I had prepared in advance of a meeting with external visitors. When I went to collect tray the biscuits had disappeared - I can only assume they were stolen!!

If the culprit is reading this email then hopefully their face is red and they are suitably embarrassed.

It might start with biscuits but where will it all end!!

Stealing is stealing no matter what or how you try to justify it. I know that on the whole we work with ethical and trustworthy people however there is obviously an exception to every rule!

A very disillusioned Julie PS I don't want any smart replies to this email.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Original Message----Sent: 10 March 2006 10:21 To: All BCC Subject: GYM MEMBERSHIP Hi everyone, Just in case anyone might be interested , I am cancelling my joint Gym membership at LA fitness ( gold

Great to see council employees not supporting their own facilities!!!!!!!

-----Original Message----Sent: 10 March 2006 10:38 To: All BCC Subject: RE: GYM MEMBERSHIP Totally agree Jack Ricky

-----Original Message----Sent: 10 March 2006 10:58 To: All BCC Subject: RE: GYM MEMBERSHIP Maybe that's because Council facilities are not close enough to use before or after work � especially for those of us without car parking spaces who are unable to bring our cars into work. I am sure this is one of the main reasons that LA Fitness is so popular with Council staff.

-----Original Message----Sent: 10 March 2006 12:16 To: All BCC Subject: RE: GYM MEMBERSHIP surely by asking everyone to stop, you are in fact helping to continue the debate!!

J

-----Original Message----Sent: 10 March 2006 12:27 Cc: All BCC Subject: RE: GYM MEMBERSHIP Whats wrong with a HEALTHY debate

-----Original Message----Sent: 10 March 2006 12:34 Cc: All BCC Subject: RE: GYM MEMBERSHIP Obviously clogs your e-mails

-----Original Message----Sent: 10 March 2006 11:14 To: All BCC Subject: FW: GYM MEMBERSHIP Ricky/Jackie There might be more employee support for our Leisure Centres if a decent staff discount were offered as is the case in other Councils(ask her neighbours in Newtownabbey BC) This would benefit the Council as a whole: 1. Increased income for the Centres.

2. Healthier workforce.

3. Reduced absence levels. etc. etc. etc.

Tony.

-----Original Message----Sent: 10 March 2006 11:20 To: All BCC Subject: RE: GYM MEMBERSHIP Any chance we can knock the gym debate in the head! Go for a long walk and save your money.

-----Original Message----Sent: 10 March 2006 11:39 To: All BCC Subject: RE: GYM MEMBERSHIP Well done Tim for trying to help your colleagues This week I attended the Women's Day at the Olympia Leisure Centre. It took me a _ hour to get from City Hall to Boucher Road and that was because I was fortunate enough to catch one of the infrequent Boucher Road buses (it travels via the

.nothing worse than clogged e-mails

-----Original Message----Sent: 10 March 2006 14:01 To: All BCC Subject: RE: GYM MEMBERSHIP Nothing a bit of exercise won’t sort though. :-)

-----Original Message----Sent: 10 March 2006 14:14 To: All BCC Subject: RE: GYM MEMBERSHIP Surely clogged arteries are worse than clogged e-mails?

Leave our Tim alone- he�s feeling thoroughly chastened!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mike Wilkinson

Through my time as a security guard I have met many types of people, all with different reasons for doing this form of occupation. There are those who are there because they feel they are doing something productive and genuinely like interacting with the public. Then there are those who like the feeling of authority a uniform brings so that they can pander to their egoistic and (dare I say it) aggressive fantasies. Then there are those who just want to get the shift in as easy as they possibly can by getting a quiet site, eat their soggy sandwiches and read a boring tabloid without being disturbed too much. And, of course, there are the ones who just need the money and for whatever reason are unable to get a better job anywhere else.

However, the reasons people choose this kind of occupation can be as varied as the types choosing it. For instance, it is not uncommon to find cash-strapped students taking these positions to top up their university fees and, if they are lucky enough, get a quiet site to swot for exams. There are also the unemployed individuals who feel the need to take a break from the relentlesss form filling, job searching and journeys to interviews which make unemployment a form of employment in itself.

Another aspect of security work that pervades irrespective of the firm or site or reason that people take up guarding is that the element of danger is always present. Anyone who goes onto a site, even though the site may have a reputation for being quiet, can be putting their life at risk. If the person doing the guarding is not up to the challenge of the situation (perhaps due to being tired and overworked, leading to stress and anxiety) the person will eventually develop health problems which may well render them vulnerable to any problems that may unexpectedly arise.

Security firms do not take into consideration problems a person may be having.

Take the time when I arrived home from the City Hospital where my mother (and guardian) lay dying of fibrosis of the lungs (caused by her past employment in the mills). There was a telephone call from the security firm I was working for at the time saying that the Edenderry site was down and they needed me to relieve the supervisor who was stranded there until they could get someone to take over.

This being what I thought was my night off I had been boozing practically the whole road from the hospital and was in no mood for getting fucked over (please pardon the lingo). Anyway, against my better judgement, I was talked into doing the rest of the shift (‘All we need is a body on site’ they had said). On arriving at Edenderry mill (now an industrial estate) I was confronted by the area supervisor who promptly accused me of being drunk. I of course took exception to his loaded remark concerning what I saw as my business, not his. After all, this was supposed to be my only night off and I had been looking forward to it. So, I replied in an agitated tone that I was there to relieve him and if he didn’t button his lip sharpish then I would just have to button it for him. As well as this I informed him that he could be carried off the site if he did not walk off the site smartly. He then gubbed me one on the bake, so I clocked him one on his right peeper.

After that relations between us rapidly deteriorated to the point where any passers-by in the vicinity were treated to the spectacle of two security men in full uniform having an all out brawl in the middle of the Crumlin Road. The whole debacle ended with me telling him to stick his job where the monkey sticks it’s nuts and ranting something about bankrupting his hole-in-the-wall by taking him to court on an assault charge. So there ended my career as a security guard - for the time being anyway.

the vacuum THE VACUUM

Karnal Bunt: – Is Your Family Safe?

By Michael Begg The Security Service, or MI5, is the UK’s security intelligence agency, responsible for 'protecting the country against covertly organised threats to national security', including 'terrorism, espionage and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction' (although, while the paint is not exactly still wet on that last part of the Service’s mission, one does nonetheless get the impression that it hasn’t always been there – possibly it was decided recently to look within the UK for WMDs, or, more correctly, WsMD, when none could be found elsewhere).

On their website (www.mi5.gov.uk), MI5 set out their aims. These are all fairly straightforward and what you’d expect to see here: frustrate terrorism, stop (other people’s) spying, reduce serious crime, 'frustrate procurement by proliferating countries of material, technology or expertise relating to WMDs' (oops, looking bolted on again, I’m afraid). These aims are then translated into what they’re pleased to call a 'Statement of Purpose and Values', in which they claim: '... we are guided by a commitment to: • • • • •

legality; integrity; objectivity; a sense of proportion about our work; and respect and consideration for each other and for those with whom we work outside the service.'

And I have to say I stopped here, chilled to the marrow. I really didn’t want to read on. It was clear that the website of the UK’s Security Service had already been infiltrated. By whom it was unclear, but the contamination was obvious enough: which self-respecting security service agent, after all, would ever be concerned about the legality of their work, the integrity of their conduct, or maintaining a sense of objectivity? What possible use is a sense of proportion when you’re haring down an alley in Belgravia after an East-European attaché with a staff list of our Balkan office in the pocket of his brown, pseudo-leather blouson? And as for respecting those outside the service, isn’t contempt for civilians, and particularly for the police, one of the few perks in an otherwise thankless and dispiriting existence sitting for weeks on end outside rented suburban accommodation in terrible clothes and worse cars, drinking polystyrene coffee and growing sideburns out of boredom?

So who did it? Who penetrated the MI5 website and stuck in all those references to WsMD, and all that rubbish about them not breaking the law and being nice to people? The lazy assumption would, of course, be the government. It’s certainly in the usual vein of ‘let’s all have some respect’ and ‘stay inside and watch your televisions’, the customary ‘yes, it is a dangerous world, but you have another doughnut and leave all that to us’. But it’s just so crap, so obviously not what the security service has (or, to be fair, should have) on their mind when they’re listening in on 750 consecutive hours of indescribably tedious phone calls from the phone of a secretary in the Jibrovian legation, that it looks

almost deliberately rubbish. And that’s where it becomes a lot more scary, because, if it’s not the Government interfering like this, then who is it?

The best we can hope for is that it’s some harmless brainy teenager taking a break from otherwise constant self-pleasuring to hack into establishment websites and change them to look a bit crappy.

That, or perhaps a collection of the sort of people who put traffic cones on the heads of statues to horseback-mounted regency generals around the country; something similarly silly but harmless. And if it’s not any of those, then I don’t want to know.

Compartmentalising, for the nonce, thoughts of sinister insipidising forces at work, what else is there in the website that might warrant a look? Well, the sections on terrorism and WsMD are pretty much as one might expect; these days it’s more al-Q and anthrax than sectarians and semtex. Add in quite a few that-could-mean-anything statements ('in 2003/2004 we contributed to the disruption of 30 proven or suspected attempts by countries of concern to acquire WMD-related goods or expertise from the UK') and you can imagine the rest. But thinking back to our man still tanking round the posher parts of Westminster in pursuit of a swarthy and ill-dressed miscreant, what about MI5’s pages on espionage? Well, I’m afraid that, a few eyebrowraising scraps aside ('The number of Russian intelligence officers in London has not fallen since Soviet times'; 'We estimate that at least 20 foreign intelligence services are operating to some degree against UK interests'), it’s slim pickings in this part. And fair enough – it’s difficult to imagine what they could tell us here without giving the pseudo-leather-blousoned in our midst a head start. And we’re none of us as fit as we used to be, so that’s the last thing we want.

So there we are, 800 words in and already finished with the subject. Oh dear. But hold on, what about the other links – those ones over there down the side? Yes, there. Look.

And that’s where I found www.preparingforemergencies.gov.uk, and a more wide-eyed and hysterical load of panic you’d be hard pressed to find on a government website – none of your 'respect' and 'sense of proportion here'. From the list of the FIVE THREAT LEVELS of terrorism in the UK (Low, Moderate, Substantial, Severe and Critical – ever so slightly biased towards the frantically pant-peeing), to the motto down the side of the page 'GO IN, STAY IN, TUNE IN', this must be the direct descendant of the 'Protect and Survive' material that had us all miserably counting the soup tins in the cupboard under the stairs and wondering which door frame would be most likely to hold up and afford us a day and a half more life in the event of a nuclear strike, before we all died of pure 1980s despair, our brittle, milk-starved bones (curse you, Thatch!) crumbling and shot through with nasty Soviet radiation and our nearest and dearest all X-ray mental and turning on each other like extras in a drama of the period.

But aside from more of the same RUN FOR THE HILLS, WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE! sort of thing, I did find one section titled “Advice on specific emergencies”. This had bits on Severe Weather, Epidemics and Pandemics (one for the pedants), Transport Accidents, Public Protest and Industrial Action (one for the Daily Mail readers)

Miguel Martin

and one about Animal and Plant Diseases. This latter section looked pretty unpromising, but I had a look into it anyway. Sure enough, there was some advice from the Association of British Insurers on business continuity during a possible flu pandemic.

Pretty much what Scrooge would have written, had he been around today (and real). But tucked in at the bottom was a mention of 'Epidemics and pandemics which might affect animals and plants, such as bird flu, foot and mouth disease, rabies and karnal bunt', which sounds like something from Call My Bluff.

'Epidemics and pandemics which might affect animals and plants, such as bird flu, foot and mouth disease, rabies and karnal bunt', which sounds like something from Call My Bluff.

'Is it Frank’s 1990s thrash-metal band with a stage show renowned for its explicit bestiality; is it Vanessa’s genital bruising caused by excessive use of trams up until the late 1950s; or is it indeed Donald’s fungal disease of wheat, rye and triticale that invades the kernels and obtains its nutrition from the endosperm, leaving behind waste products with a disagreeable odour that makes bunted kernels

too unpalatable for use in flour?'

Not quite worth ploughing through both websites for, of course, but a nice term to bring out next time one of your mates makes a big show of scratching his nuts manfully in the pub. And I imagine that shoving the expression through Wikipaedia would doubtless reveal it to have been the name of the third leader of the Fruntigan Confederation in series 27 of one of the more pointless Star Trek spinoffs.

But by bringing the terrorist threat right into the sanctity of your family home and the Weetabix you all have for breakfast, maybe, just maybe, the website will have done its job in making you fill even more of your day with considering trepidatiously the world outside as a constant source of danger, nastiness and general threat that you should be grateful the boys and girls over at MI5 are doing their very best to save us from. Or something.

THE VACUUM

Obscure object of desire

By Gerard Pollock Being not overly enamoured with techofads, this one got me by surprise. And, having held out long enough to make a show of resistance, when I inevitably did succumb, the pain of defeat was swamped by the uberjoy of my consumptive neophilia: I had a new toy. Indeed, my iPod, pristine wedge of ice that it was when I bought it, quickly became an outlier of my very being, the soundtrack to my life emanating from within its eidolon slab.

It was perfect then, but time since has softened its aesthetic. I regret at times not carrying it in a cover, but then I could not encase something so cool with something so uncool. As time passed, and neophiliac pleasures dulled, instead of going off it, I instead found myself obsessing with a certain part of it, coming again and again to fixate upon it in particular. Not it’s video imaging, or the fidelity of its audio reproduction, but something far more

random. I don’t know exactly why I find myself staring at it. Perhaps it’s because I like the colour orange, or perhaps that I like crescents, or perhaps that I just obsess. Whatever, it is quite a mystery to me, but the little crescent of day-glo orange, revealed by a sweep of the HOLD button is, I think, totally compelling.

Exactly why, I cannot say. Or even why, on the grand scheme of things, should this falcated crumb of pumpkin even matter at all? Well, on the grand scheme of things it shouldn’t, what with America/ Global Warming/ Tsunamis/ Hurricanes/ the Tipping Point/ China/ assorted oil crises/ America/ Iran/ Iraq/ Syria/ Lebanon/ N. Korea/ Somalia/ Shehab III missiles/ America/ BP/ Shell/ Killer Cola/ Microsoft/ Nestle/ Apple/ oranges/ and getting five-a-day in total/ is Fair Trade enough or do I have to go for Shade Grown too?/ not being able to not drink Killer Cola/ racism/ political correctness/ sexism/ boobs and Transformers The Movie coming out, it definitely shouldn’t matter. But it does anyway; it is important because I get the feeling that something is going on.

So I looked into it. There is a trick in design and/or marketing that’s called referencing apparently. It’s a very clever trick that’s played on us almost wittingly. It’s when the conscious states that we associate with one thing, a good thing say, are misappropriated, to favourably modify the emotional responses towards some other thing. I will give an example by inversion: imagine you were watching a play, throughout the last hour of which you needed to go to the bathroom; the denouement just pipping at the post your ability to not piss yourself. It is not difficult to see how your impression of the play might not be too favourable.

Is this then, the kind of thing that’s happening with the little orange bit of my iPod? Perhaps.

Or perhaps there’s no more to it than it contrasts pleasingly with the stainless steel against which it is set. Perhaps, but then again designer Jonathan

Ives, now Commander of the British Empire, hasn’t shied away from such machinations before. Take the nano, par example. This is a very clever piece of kit, cleverer than you probably imagine. Not only is small enough to fit in the little key-pocket of your slacks, but it is also smart enough to work its way deep inside your mind, in search for unconscious predilections to reference. A friend has one, and it really is amazing. Holding it in my hand, its perfect sterility evokes a feeling of crisp and hyper-tidiness.

Now why is that? why those particular feelings? Not many people know this but the iPod nano, by the proportions of length and breadth, makes aesthetic allusions to a bath. Interested readers may compare the ratios of length and breadth for themselves.

Of course I am struck by its suggestion of cleanliness then. And cleanliness is of course next

only to Godliness. It could all be mere coincidence, but the fact that Commander Ives once earned his crust designing...you know it...baths, makes the coincidence call a hard one to sustain. So what of the orange upon which I fixate so? Well, the iGod is now in its fifth incarnation, and in a design that wouldn’t be compromised for even a logistical necessity, i.e. a battery replacement panel, one knows that every atom has been carefully appraised and planned before being included. So what then, if anything, is this little orange bit doing on my iPod? I don’t know, but I’ll bet there’s a rationale for it somewhere, in some desk, in some design lab, dictating in terms that the ad-men are schooled in, the lineage, breeding and certificate of entitlement for this slice of orange.

the vacuum THE VACUUM

COMPUTER SECURITY Becoming a hacker is deceptively simple. All you have to do is watch the 1995 movie Hackers ('starring' Jonny Lee Miller) and copy absolutely everything the characters do. Not only will this make you a proficient hacker, but will earn the respect of already established hackers. Once educated, you gain magical powers that allow you to steal other people’s Internets and permit you to talk to your computer.

Experienced hackers can explode electric grids with their minds, and gain access to the Pentagon’s security systems via their TV. Sadly, the side effects of hacking include a loss of social skills, increased body odour and the attainment of sexual gratification by plugging in the cocklike crossover cables inside their computer, which stems their ultimate sadistic fantasy of repopulating the planet with Seven-of-Nine styled cyborgs. Fact.

The evil and nefarious archetype of the computer hacker originated around the time the 1984 movie Wargames was released, which coincided with a number of infamous busts and publicised crimes regarding hackers. Media claims of the wild power of hackers, located amongst us in suburbia, became an overriding theme as more arrests occurred. As with any media outrage scapegoats were sought, the ultimate example being made of Kevin Mitnick, who was held without trial, bail or charges listed against him for four years, a completely disproportionate and unjust punishment for the crimes committed. But this is a world far removed from Mr Average who buys his family PC from Dixons and subscribes to broadband from AOL. What has he to fear? Quite a lot according to the hackers consulted, but let’s get a few definitions sorted first...

Most hackers are not malicious; they learn their skills through curiosity or a desire to protect themselves. A cracker as someone who engages in illegal system cracking or software cracking to circumvent computer security systems; these are the criminals the media assigns the term ‘hacker’.

A script kiddie is a derogatory term for a cracker who uses scripts and programs developed by others without knowing what they are or how they work.

Whereas hackers and crackers target specific systems mainly for the challenge, script kiddies will often scan thousands of computers looking for vulnerable targets before initiating an attack. This will include Mr Average’s happy family PC. Script Kiddies have at their disposal a large number of effective, easily downloadable malicious programs capable of harassing even advanced computers and networks. These include: Computer Worms A computer worm is not the same as a virus. A virus works by attaching to other programs within the computer program. For this reason, a virus is dependent on other programs within the target system. A computer worm is more dangerous, in that it is self sufficient and does not require attachment to another program. If a worm strikes a computer network, it can be sent throughout the entire system, often without the users realizing it. The purpose of a worm is to sap the computer or the network of bandwidth, thus slowing performance. Sometimes, however, a worm can be programmed to delete or encode files, which will be of concern to Mr Average when he loses the holiday snaps from Majorca 2004.

Fortunately, around 80% of infections are caused by the confirmation of the victim - so think twice by clicking the 'yes' button.

Denial-of-Service Attack A Denial-of-Service (DOS) Attack is an attempt to shut down network activity in a target system by sapping the computer network of bandwidth. A number of distinct DOS attacks exist which pursue this goal through different means; home computer users are often unaware their PC will be recruited in these attacks. A compromised PC can become a zombie within a botnet, and will be used to perform malicious tasks of one sort or another under remote direction. A study by IronPort in June this year found that 80% of all email spam is sent by zombie PCs. Unfortunately, it is quite likely your PC is one of the undead - unprotected PCs running windows can become infected within 20 minutes of going online according to the hacker nicknamed “hash”; if you download shareware and use peer-2-peer software your PC is almost certainly infected (more often

Illustration by Fionnuala Doran

than not via a Trojan: a malicious program that is disguised as or embedded within legitimate software).

Indirect Programs Other easily accessible programs offer indirect means of accessing target computers rather than simply overwhelming them with information. Back Orifice and Netbus allow script kiddies to target a computer system and control it remotely. While this function is incredibly useful in the hands of technical support, it can be used to cause considerable damage by a malicious hacker.

Depressingly, script kiddies are not the only source of danger to your PC. Spyware is a type of program that watches what users do with their computer then send this information to a third party over the Internet. Infection can occur via a Trojan, worm or virus, but flaws in Microsoft’s Internet

Explorer offers further avenues of exploitation for the spies: a pop-up window may appear offering the surfer optimised Internet access or some such; the spyware software will install no matter if the offer is declined. Advertisers use cookies (small parcels of information stored on users’ computers by websites) to track people’s browsing among various sites carrying ads from the same firm and thus to build up a marketing profile of the person or family using the computer. This information is used to bombard the victim with pop-up ads and emails. If you find yourself suffering from large volumes of Viagra and penis enlarging spam, it’s because they know you look at porn. Worse still are keyloggers, a variety of spyware that records what is typed into the keyboard.

This provides a means to obtain passwords or credit card numbers, and yes, your bank account can be emptied.

If you find yourself suffering from large volumes of Viagra and penis enlarging spam, it’s because they know you look at porn.

So what can Mr Average do to prevent these nasties spoiling his £400 Dell? All hackers state the best protection from any form of intrusion is knowledge. By all means, install firewalls, anti virus and security software - hackers don’t use them, but they’re better than nothing for the novice user (and even better if the manuals are read), and ensure all security updates for the operating system are downloaded and installed from the outset. Learn what active processes are in your Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del, Processes), and if any new processes appear find out what they are, then find out how to remove them if they shouldn’t be there. If you have a slow or hanging PC, take a look at the performance (Ctrl-Alt-Del, Performance). If the CPU usage is up around 100% you’re either infected or have a shit PC. Reliable freeware programmes like Lavasoft’s AdAware, or Spybot - Search and Destroy will remove known spyware software, and using a browser other than Internet Explorer prevents exploitation of security flaws (e.g. Mozilla Firefox or Opera). And be vigilant!

If you want to find out more about hacking, download the IRC chat client mIRC and get to know some of the folks there. But be careful... the naive or the rude will become victims. At best, if there are any sexy videos of your partner on your hard drive they will be shown on the Internet. At worse, you could suffer the same fate as law scholar Magnus Eriksson, who had 3500 images of child pornography planted on his hard drive by someone using the Netbus program... Be safe!

Thanks to Electic_Mistress, Ninja T Penguin, Elias E, hash, chrome and Pill for their knowledge of the dark arts.

THE VACUUM

the vacuum may 06

Homeland Security

ISSUE 33 Published by Factotum Beware of the dog.

By Jennifer L. Grigg I went to the US the other day for seventy-two hours: my grandmother’s ninety-second birthday was bringing the family together in St. Louis, Missouri. I left my two young children with their father in London and flew to Boston, met my parents at the airport and then flew with them to St. Louis. The most relaxing part of the journey was my flight from London – my parents were arguing in an irritable way when I met them – then my sister rang my mother’s mobile. She and her husband and kids were taking an earlier flight and they were already through security. My sister had just overheard some businessmen talking about the horrible weather in St. Louis and possible tornadoes. The weather is always horrible in St. Louis. My sister’s horror of flying could only be exacerbated by this news and she called my mother looking for assurance. What could my mother say? Not much. My father’s own anxiety was mounting and we went for something to eat before our flight and the security queues, shoe removal, razor blade jokes and unsmiling officials. I chose ham and cheese from one vendor, my father something else from another, eschewing the lure of McDonald’s. Once on the plane, he proceeded to turn grey and green and sit silently, stomach churning. My mother and I nudged each other and criticised his inevitably bad sandwich choice, while silently notching up another case of psychosomatic family-induced illness.

Where are our bags? Carousel confusion and then finally, there. We queue for the rental car – my insistence on being named as an additional driver to stave off a drink-driving death, and my father’s demand for our room keys in the lobby of the wrong hotel got our arrival off to a good start. How we laughed as we lugged our bags back to the car and drove around the block to the right hotel. The weather was muggy but okay – typical for St. Louis in March. The idea of dinner that night in a local Italian place with his brother and assorted nephews with wives and girlfriends left my father eating ‘something simple’ from room-service with my sister and her kids in their hotel room. Mom and I are left to face our relatives a deux after a narrow escape with me driving on the wrong side of the interminable car park ramp into the dusk, a strange greenish sky brewing.

A few drinks later and my uncle is railing against the incompetence of the NHS after I made the mistake of relating a funny story about waiting in A&E once for four hours with my five-year old. My cousin, in medical school, rolled his eyes at his father. At least he knows the score, and my other cousin once spent a year teaching in London. In the Midwest, some people think I might as well be a Communist for choosing the live in a country other than the US. In the morning we all meet for breakfast in the hotel dining room. My sister admits a little air-rage incident yesterday and that the pilot threatened to have her arrested upon arrival if she didn’t behave.

Her fear of flying and lioness-like attitude to her children’s perceived safety makes her hell in the air.

Now it is my brother-in-law’s turn to roll his eyes.

Dinner that night is my grandmother’s birthday party at the St. Louis Club, where once, when I was four years old, I got left behind in the lift and was eventually found after a tour of the kitchens and various of the other eighteen floors in the building. This is something no one seems to ever have forgotten, except me. There are about seventy people there for cocktails and dinner. It doesn’t do

to think about how so many Whiskey Sours, Old-Fashioneds and Rob-Roys can be consumed before wine with dinner and then the revellers, average age seventy-five, drive home in their boat-like Caddies. My Dad tells me about his first car. He wanted a convertible MG that a neighbour was selling, but his father decided it wasn’t safe

As we approach the hotel parking lot I hear a continuous siren and say ‘Is that a tornado warning?’ Rising note of panic in my voice – I have two young children to live for. for a teenager. So, my father settled for a grey, ’59 Ford, something that would rankle his Republican friends who all drove Chryslers. We survive dinner, though as the eldest grandchild I can’t think of anything witty to say in my toast and my medicalschool cousin seems to be suffering from some sort of stomach bug and has to keep leaving the table.

My mother stage whispers that they will keep eating fish in a land-locked state. This is just one of her pet peeves about Missouri. Wherever you go to eat they proudly reel off a huge list of ‘fresh’ fish for your delectation when the only thing that could be fresh is catfish from the Mississippi, which is never on the menu. It is impressive listening to all the toasts delivered with verve and coherence by people who have known my grandmother for so long – a few for ninety-two years. Lots of people, of course, are dead now and my grandmother’s circle of acquaintances gets younger and younger.

At breakfast on Sunday, my sister is getting nervous.

She is leaving in a few hours and keeps looking out the window at the clouds. The sky is shifting and the wind whips the thin trees to one side. My mother convinces her to change her flight to an earlier, bigger plane. She does, the kids finish their pancakes, and they race out of the hotel to catch it. My parents and I are hanging around

one more night for dinner with my grandmother and great-uncle Bob. We are meeting at six at Old Warson, a country club a few miles from the hotel. My father decides he needs a few things from the pharmacy and a new toothbrush for my grandmother wouldn’t go amiss, so we drive off to Schnucks, the local shopping mall. I am not making that name up. My father went to school with one of the Schnuck kids. By the time we get back into the car, the sky is a really odd yellow colour and the clouds are black, wind lashes us, though it is a humid eighty degrees. As we approach the hotel parking lot I hear a continuous siren and say ‘Is that a tornado warning?’ Rising note of panic in my voice – I have two young children to live for. Luckily my father parks the car on a lower level to keep us out of the rain and we enter the hotel on the basement level. People rush around distractedly. I convince my parents that the sensible thing is to stay in the basement level with another worried looking mother of two and read our endless supply of New York Times papers and New Yorker magazines, the reading of which is constantly interrupted by meal after meal. The siren continues for fifteen minutes and handymen stride up and down with pliers. Finally, because we are going to be late for dinner, tornado be damned, we creep up the stairs to the lobby. The siren is off, outside the sky is clearing, but there is ominous talk of things not being safe until the sun goes down. I am unaware of this meteorological phenomenon and find out from the TV while changing for dinner that tornadoes need heat from the sun for the right air funnel conditions to be created. They never happen at night. Twelve people have been killed in the last hour by the tornado, which we sat out in the basement.

We make our way out of the car park and head out to Old Warson, not scratching the car on any pillars though now we have to exit the car park up some strange ramp/alley thing because the storm brought down something or other. Driving down the leafy suburban roads to the club, traffic lights are out and branches litter the yards and road. Some houses seem to have no electricity and we begin to wonder if the restaurant will have any power in the kitchens. Undaunted, my relatives are already waiting, drinks in hand. The waitress tells us the staff were hoping to be sent home, but the power came back on and everything on the menu is available, including twelve different kinds of fresh fish.

My mother shoots my father a look and my uncle orders halibut. Dad sticks to steak and I have a hamburger, well done.

The next morning we drive to the airport after breakfast, the three of us on a flight to Boston - nice, big plane in calm, sunny weather. At the airport I suggest Dad might like a large prawn sandwich with extra mayonnaise and perhaps some oysters for dessert? I am looking forward to my night flight – the bliss of films on tap and a quiet drink alone before re-entry to London. I always cry saying goodbye at the airport – something about Dad and how we can’t really look at each other or we’ll both dissolve; my mother is stoic – her mind already on what needs to be done in the garden, her work, her dogs. I watch them heading towards their car, none of us getting any younger, as my Grandmother likes to say.

112-114 Donegall Street Belfast BT1 2GX [e] info@factotum.org.uk www.factotum.org.uk Editors & Design Stephen Hackett Richard West Reviews Editor Fionola Merideth Illustrations Duncan Ross Web editor Stephen Hull Distribution Manager Jason Mills Advertising Stephen Hackett To advertise in the Vacuum or receive information about our advertising rates call 028 90330893 or email info@factotum.org.uk Print run: 15,000 Distribution: Northern Ireland and Dublin The Vacuum welcomes and encourages correspondence.

Write to the above address or email letters@factotum.org.uk All copyright remains with the authors.

Printer: Bangor Spectator

the vacuum THE VACUUM

By David Malcolmson Whatever your political perspective, it’s fair to say that the public image of the police is a fairly racy one.

Yes, I know, it’s hard to think of most members of the PSNI as sex on a truncheon – although there is something quite thigh-watering about the mountain bike riding cops who scoot round the city centre, or maybe that’s just me – but I’m really thinking about the wider perception of the police in entertainment and the creative media. Whether they’re generally upright, like Starsky and Hutch, Prime Suspect or Inspector Morse, or bad and corrupt, like those in The Shield, the image is a fairly alluring one. On screen they’re often the masters of their universe, or at least the streets round their local nick, engaged in the eternal struggle between good and evil, no matter how far removed this might be from the fairly mundane reality of a copper’s lot.

Of course, if you believe what you see on telly or in films, the intelligence services and the army are the seriously cool organisations to join. If it floats your boat, you could be nailing towel-heads with Grant from Eastenders or meeting aliens with spooky Mulder. Presumably, most people who do these jobs find their doppelgangers fairly amusing, but these portrayals do shape at least some of our perceptions of the security services. What, however, of those who find themselves at the bottom of this impromptu league of law and order bling, those whom TV and film producers regularly depict as either incompetents or psychopaths or both?

I’m talking about prison officers. There’s Tom Hanks in The Green Mile, of course, providing a comforting shoulder for a gentle black giant, but that, it seems to me, is the exception that proves the rule.

There doesn’t appear to be any of the variety inherent elsewhere.

Yet I suspect that the monochrome portrayal of their existence is probably the most accurate. Not necessarily in terms of their character – I’ve met several prison officers, none of whom seemed especially useless or sadistic – but because their job has limited potential for the kind of excitement hinted at elsewhere. For those who make telly the army has the SAS, the police the Vice Squad, the intelligence services the FBI, and the prison service has a bunch of keys and a bit of a gut. They only get to lock up what the others are finished with.

When I was in my early twenties, my dad attempted to interest me in becoming a prison officer by describing the job in exactly these terms. I was unsure of what I really wanted to do, so he suggested entering the family business. ‘It pays well, son,’ he said, ‘you could be on 20 grand pretty much straight away, which isn’t bad for a single fella, and the main part of the job is opening and closing cell doors. The biggest problem is the boredom, really.’ Aware of my bookish tendencies, he then attempted to sweeten the pill. ‘Of course, it would give you plenty of time to read.’

He spoke from experience. My father was a prison officer in Northern Ireland for over 20 years, as were several of our relations. University educated, but not in anything that would lead easily to a vocation, he tried a variety of other jobs before I was born, but finally settled on a career that, during the troubles, provided the prospect of a long career, a decent wage and the prospect of plenty of overtime.

In return, it gave him, and us, a decent home, a foreign holiday every year - in the days before this was common – and a way of life that would mark the daily routine of our existence for all of my childhood and youth.

When I was very young, I didn’t know what he did and my memories, like many memories of childhood, are vivid but highly fragmented. He went to work in the morning and came home at night, of course, but also sometimes went to work at

night but appeared at home after my mum had picked us up from primary school. So far so normal, but I also think of specific things which are telling in retrospect. My sister and I were taken in late-night car drives across the country in our pyjamas so my mum could pick him up from work, which I liked as we got to stay up late, sometimes getting home just as ITN’s 10 o’clock news came on. I remember the laminated playing cards he kept in his coat pocket which, in different combinations, seemed to be some sort of security code which allowed him into work, and I remember that we never went to Belfast city centre.

We lived in an estate in the suburbs, but the centre was always out of bounds, not because of the regular bomb scares or incendiaries – I was too young to remember Bloody Friday – but because, now, I can see that he and mum were wary of being identified by any ex-prisoners. As I grew up in an era when assassination was a regular feature on the nightly bulletin, which he watched religiously when he was home, his caution was understandable. I think they had once been chased through the city when they had ventured in to do some Christmas shopping, so they never went again, and places like Leisureworld took on the kind of mythical status for me that Unicorns or the Northern Lights took for others. Other children in our estate seemed to go there all the time and I was jealous of their tales of this never-ending toy kingdom only a few miles away.

I was 14, and capable of going to the city centre on my own, before I entered its doors.

I didn’t realise this was a restriction at the time, but I must have picked up something of the nature of my father’s work at a very young age, since I remember the end of the hunger strike very clearly. I was still a small child, and my grandfather was babysitting my sister and I one night, my mum

having gone to her part-time job in a bar. I recall that my father hadn’t been around a lot at the time – there were no trips to the park, no walks at Shaw’s Bridge, no football for a while. It was about half seven or eight in the evening, I think, and I watched as programmes were interrupted for a statement by Humphrey Atkins, who was then one of the Tory ministers in charge here, that the hunger strikes had come to an end.

I turned to my grandfather and said, ‘that’s the best news there’s been in ages.’ I had little idea of the wider course of events, but it still strikes me as an odd statement for a seven year old to make.

I gradually began to notice other aspects of our life which were telling. The way my father would drop his keys on to the driveway every morning before he ran us to school. ‘Why do you always drop your keys Dad?’ I asked. ‘Never you mind,’ he would say, or ‘they’re just a bit awkward,’ if he was feeling more charitable. I later realised he was checking for a car bomb. He would not let me or my sister collect any of the post, ever, and, on a couple of occasions we were made to go into the back garden just after the postman called. He was checking packages which had arrived which he couldn’t remember ordering. Once, when I was older, I came home to find that a couple of cassettes I had bought from a mail-order music club had led him to call the police out. It certainly gave my tape of Blondie’s Greatest Hits a bit of edge.

He told us never to mention his occupation to anyone at school, to say that he was a civil servant if we were asked. This was understandable, but as we became teenagers, he became more forthcoming. We still maintained that he was a civil servant, but he got into the habit of sitting us down when he got home and telling us all about his work.

I knew more of the internal workings of the prison

he was in than the paramilitaries and MI5 combined.

I dreaded these times, however. They could go on for hours. He sat us down and launched into a monologue about his job, the politics, the prisoners, the staff and the stress. If we ventured an opinion we were always wrong, and my sister and I began to engineer ourselves out of his way. He also developed an addiction to Eastenders, often talking to the characters on the television. These were the signs of a man under seige, but, like most teenagers, I just wanted what was best for me, and began to avoid his company as much as possible.

Yet his career could not but impact on my life. Things got more serious and urgent when loyalists began targeting prison officers in the mid 1980s. I had known that republican paramilitaries posed a danger to us, but we lived in an overwhelmingly Protestant area of Belfast, and even had a couple of neighbours who had taken part in the Ulster Workers Council strike in the 1970s. It was unspoken, but we assumed that our relatively homogenous community was safe – loyalists wouldn’t, as far as I was concerned, attack us.

That changed, and we moved house. We lived near a couple of large loyalist estates, and had grown used to hearing various hymns of praise to soldiers of the UVF early on a Sunday morning as the drunken singers passed our house on their way home from the pub. Yet something more urgent must have occurred, as we moved to safer, more explicitly middle class territory, to a house with bullet proof windows and doors and an extensive security alarm system, which was fitted and paid for by the government. A couple of men my father knew were murdered, and he taught us how to escape from an upstairs window, in the event of a bomb at the front of the house, by tying bed sheets together and descending. Our neighbours were mostly in the police or prison service themselves – I got a lift to my summer job with one of them – and newcomers were checked out informally to ascertain if they posed any danger. There was safety in numbers.

By this stage, I was planning my own escape and left for university as soon as I could, resisting his entreaties for me to emulate him, but my father’s exit from the prison service didn’t come for many more years. He was given an attractive settlement in the round of prison closures and redundancies which followed the prisoner releases negotiated as part of the Good Friday Agreement. I don’t really talk to him much anymore but, as far as I can tell, retirement has been difficult. His job consumed him so much, in body and mind, that he found it difficult to do anything else, developing no hobbies or interests beyond watching TV and reading the occasional thriller.

Some people might be sympathetic and pity the life he has led, others might regard him as a cog in an oppressive system. I don’t think he would care either way. He made a choice which ended up determining the course of his life and, for a long time, that of his family. In that way he was not unlike many of those he locked up, but he had no political motive for doing so, no real feeling for a country, a ruler or a government. He didn’t take the job out of duty or to prove his fidelity to a cause. I never heard him express himself in these terms. Instead, he picked a career which held, as he saw it, the prospect of a relatively comfortable middle-class life, very different from that which his own father had led on building sites, scraping to pay the rent. Besides, he tried teaching but he couldn’t handle the stress.

the vacuum THE VACUUM

The Security Challenge xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Theoretical discussion of Security is all very well but there is nothing like the hard knocks and cruel lessons of the real world to distinguish the genuinely secure from the horribly vulnerable. To test how security worked in the real world we devised an experiment: we would commission a top security agency to protect an imagined client, Mr. Drudge, on a modest budget for one year in his mansion and then see how two companies offering assassination services would attempt to defeat their systems. The winner of this challenge would be decided by some of our foremost security professionals.

1. A professional sniper armed with a Parker-Hale M-85 Sniper Rifle and Lahti AT Anti-tank Rifle permanently stationed in a module beneath a small hot air balloon which can be lowered completely within the confines of The House and raised to a height of 200metres. The sniper has the abilitity to eliminate threats from both vehicular/ballistic/ technological objects (VBTs) and organic threat objects (OTOs) - people, animals, sentient plants etc. The balloon/house entrance hatch is fitted with a DNA and Element scanner, which forbids entry to the module if any foreign body is present upon re-entry.

Read on and learn...

2. A specialist parapsychologist and remote-viewer housed in a fortified grotto beneath the shed whose telepathic abilities allow her to pre-empt potential threats and to communicate directly with the other members of staff and The Occupant. Our psiexpert also has the ability to scramble technology based VBTs and induce sensations of panic and bewilderment in the minds of OTOs within a 50 meter radius of her grotto. The psi-expert also operates the surveillance centre, monitoring and reacting to information from the automated SC helicopters (see Ambient).

The Commission: Dear Sir, We are delighted you have agreed to take on the contract for the year long protection of our client, Mr. Silas Drudge, within the precincts of his property. Your budget is £1.5 million.

I would now like to see a breakdown of your proposed expenditure and outline plan for the protection of Mr. Drudge. You will bear in mind the following: 1. We of course expect you to stay within the limits of the law including planning law though we expect you would be entitled to a firearms certificate given the seriousness of the threats against Mr.Drudge.

2. Mr. Drudge expects in so far as is possible to continue his daily life including very occasionally venturing into the grounds of the house and enjoying his usual rich diet.

3. Mr. Drudge may only have two friends but he expects to be able to entertain them in his accustomed fashion, once a week.

I enclose a map of the grounds and a plan of the house. And look forward to hearing from you...

The Proposal: PsOgTek Securities nos mos tutis vos Dear Mr. Drudge (The Occupant) May I offer our congratulations on choosing PsogTeK Securities as your security partner. I have the pleasure of introducing Operation Keen Scythe.

Operation Keen Scythe - Synopsis A three-tier panoply system comprising the organic, technological and (para)psychological.

Operation Keen Scythes’ physical manifestation will comprise three Secure Zones - the outer grounds, a sealed inner geo-dome and the house itself. Three permanent staff members will inhabit the Secure Zones, providing round the clock surveillance.

In addition various ambient schemes will be in operation providing cross-platform coverage in the event of a mixed-conduct offense.

Operation Keen Scythe - Project Breakdown Physical Infrastructure 1. Outer Zone. Comprising the area between the perimeter and the sealed, inner geodome. This area retains the typical flora of adjacent private grounds whilst concealing various security devices to be detailed in the ambient breakdown.

3. Our third permanent member of staff is a martial artist from the Nimpo school of warrior philosophy. Trained in Ninjitsu, Jujitsu and KiaiJitsu Biomechanics, the Ninja will operate from a covert dojo within the stable block, taking telepathic instruction from the parapsychologist and removing threat targets pre-emptively. The Ninja is responsible for taking deliveries of household goods and supplies from vetted suppliers.

2. Inner Zone. Being a 60 meter diameter Geodome completely enveloping the house and providing an hermetically sealed, fixed-climate environment. The interior of the Inner Zone is designed to replicate dense Ecuadorian rainforest. The single airlock is guarded by spiders. Further details in the ambient breakdown.

3. The House. Again hermetically sealed - providing protection from the intense climate of the Geodome.

Entrance and exit are through an airlock at the single door. Within the premises The Occupant will be able to go about business as normal, although we will be installing several ‘back against the wall’ security/ defense features. To detail - Full CCTV coverage and motion detectors relaying information to the monitoring hub (see Staff) - Full Retinal Scans and DNA testing on all entering and leaving The House. Any object failing the test (ie. anyone that is not The Staff, The Occupant and The Designated Visitors) is instantly frozen by liquid nitrogen and removed by the spider monkeys for later consumption.

- A PanicSphere comprising a 3 meter diameter ball with 20cm composite Tungsten/Steel Alloy skin incorporating life-support facilities for ten days. The PanicSphere connects to an escape chute delivering The Occupant underground to a depth of 20 meters and a Westward direction of 50 meters. PsOgTek Securities Command instantly puts into place the Insurance Policy (see below) if the PanicSphere is activated.

and a loss of inhibitions in their target. Proven to foil the intentions of the even the most well-programed assassin. Items of pornography and stimulating content will be placed around the house to distract the Assassin while in their agitated state, allowing The Occupant to activate the PanicSphere.

-Ten Feraliminal Lycanthropizers placed around The House. Any breach of security activates The Lycanthropizers which emit infrasound frequencies stimulating atavistic animality, sexual excitement,

Staff Triumvirate Our theme of The Trinity is continued in the selection of three permanent members of staff to reside within the compound.

All members of staff have full freedom of movement within the three Security Zones.

Note: In the event of disbelief or lack of faith in the psi-experts paranormal abilities on the part of The Occupier, all her para-normal functions have technological back-up in the form of radar devices, CB radio and other forms of electronic surveillance, communication and counter-threat systems.

the vacuum THE VACUUM

Ambient (Roving Organic Defenses, Smart Technology etc.)

Ambient Costs Outer Zone Inner Zone House

£200K £100K £300K

Outer Zone

Sub-Total

£600K

Primary Defense: A patrol flock of twelve self-controlled (SC) miniature helicopters fitted with full spectrum video cameras and adapted FHN FS2000 Semi-automatic tactical combat ‘Bullpup’ type Assault Carbines.

Re-arming, re-fuelling and chaos theory flight patterns are fully automated using AI software based on BOID research. Information is relayed to the monitoring hub in the psi-grotto.

Grand Total (ex. VAT)

£1490K

PsOgTek Securities Insurance Policy If in the highly unlikely (1:12,400,762 probability) situation that all security defenses are breached and The Occupant is forced to enter the PanicSphere, PsOgTek Securities will inform the local authorities (free of charge) of a break-in at The Occupant’s address. Allowing for call-out time discrepancies this will give the Threat Object between 10 and 40 minutes to reach The Occupant before the police arrive.

I hope this is to your satisfaction.

Yours faithfully, Lieut-Col (Retired) ‘Bod’ Topheenosed-Fuknutt Managing Director PsOgTek Securities

Assassin 1

Ateles Geoffroyi Geoffroyi (Spider Monkey) in a state of roid-rage.

Secondary Defenses: - A pack of 15 South African German Shepherds with hate-gene modification. Addicted to steroids administered by the Ninja. Each animal has an intradermal frag-grenade implant which can be detonated psychokinetically by the psi-expert, rendering low-to-mid mass threat objects inoperative within a five meter radius.

- Swarms of Culicoides Impunctatus (Highland Midge) - Approx. total population - 10 billion.

- Implanted fields of Laportea Canadensis (Stinging Nettle).

- Cordon of Whin Bushes surrounding geo-dome.

- Pond contains a Trained Suicide Porpoise.

Inner Zone (Geodome) Primary Defense: Troup of Ateles Geoffroyi Geoffroyi (Spider Monkeys) kept in a constant state of roid-rage.

Camera implants in the monkey’s skulls relay information to the psi-grotto. The monkeys have been hypnotised into attacking any person other than The Staff, Occupant and two Designated Visitors.

Secondary Defenses: A menagerie of poisonous animals including:- Phyllobates Terribilis (Golden Poison Frog) - Genus Ophiophagus (King Cobra) - Loxosceles Reclusa (Brown Recluse Spider)

Operation Bombscare.

The strategy is as follows...

A phone call will be made to the police. The police will be told that a suspect device has been planted in Mr Drudge’s street. Shortly after this a small bomb will be exploded in the shed next door to Mr Drudge's house. Police will rush to the scene and cordon off the street. It is assumed they will ask people on the street to leave their houses.

A second bombscare will be phoned in to say that Mr Drudge’s house has been planted with a number of explosives in an attempt to assassinate him. (Tell the police Mr Drudge is probably in hiding and to search the house thoroughly). It is assumed the police will attempt to evacuate the house and will conduct a detailed search for all occupants. Let’s also assume that Mr Drudge says to the police he cannot leave because his life will be in danger. The police tell him that the house has been rigged with explosives and he has no alternative. Mr Drudge insists that he leaves the house under protection.

Meanwhile - Two weeks before I have installed two devices in trees on Mr Drudge’s street. These gives a clear line of site to Mr Drudge’s front and back doors.

The device is a remote control gun with mounted camera. I will ask Mr. Patrick Bloomer to make it for £50,000. I will not tell him what it is for however, as he is a deeply moral man and would not approve of my actions. Instead I will tell him I have a rat problem at home.

When Mr Drudge leaves the house I suspect at some point that I will be able to get a clear shot in. The mission is accomplished. Evidence of the assasination will be provided on the video camera.

Persuasion and Death Inc. The Mind Strategy

Operation Keen Scythe - Financial Summary

Dear Sir,

Infrastructure Costs

Thank you for requesting our services for your task.

One cannot deliver a plan for an assassination as you suggest because decisive action is dictated by events and the passage of time. I can however give some indication of the likely outcome our our undertaking you commission which I do not anticipate would prove very difficult to fulfill satisfactorily.

First of all, a period of extended surveillance has been undertaken and has disclosed that Mr. Drudge is only protected by three staff. While each of these staff are of themselves formidable we believe they are insufficient for the task they have been set. We note they must sleep rendering at least one operative dormant at any time, there is also a

£100K £250K £300K £650K

Staff Costs 3 Salaries@£50Kp/a Staff Maintenance and Equipment Sub-Total

£150K £90K £240K

The Judgement: Two security experts, Mr Frankenhammer of Coleraine Delta Force and Mr. Smith of the Dromore Car Park Company came in to our offices to evaluate the proposals. Both were very impressed by the PsOgTek work saying that they had always admired their thoroughness and innovation. Mr Smith said he was very keen to try one of their new Feraliminal Lycanthropizers, as soon as he could get his hands on one.

Assassin 1: acknowledging the small budgets available to the assassins they admired the use of the police to do some of their work for them, something both experts admitted they had tried themselves from time to time. They also liked the shooter employed. But they found two failings in the plan: 1.

That it was likely the deeply concealed Mr. Drudge would not be brought out by the ‘casual plod’ 2.

That it would be hard to attach the radio controlled Bloomer cannon to a nearby tree without alerting the defenders to its presence.

Likelihood of success: 20% Assassin 2: both judges were mystified by this proposal and initially refused to take it seriously. Mr. Frankenhammer said ‘we all read gun magazines but you cannot believe that a gun inferiority complex could reduce my performance by half’. They also thought it very unlikely a ninja could be distracted from his work ‘you can’t just distract a ninja like that’ said Mr Smith. All they would acknowledge was that German Shepherd dogs do like choco-drops and that this might be a failing in the defense plan but in general they thought there was little likelihood of this ‘psychological approach’ being effective.

Likelihood of success: 5% So, although there may be lessons for them to learn, the reputation of PsOgTek remains intact.

Assassin 2

The House: See previous information in the Physical Infrastructure Section.

Outer Zone Geodome House Costs Sub-Total

dependency on animal defenses which bring their own vulnerabilities.

To be specific about the weaknesses we see in each member of the security team and exploitable avenues that may effect a decisive conclusion to your concern: The Sniper: here we see a typical overreliance on technology to the point of fetishism. By exhibiting billboard and other signage of more recent adaptations to the Parker-Hale and Lahti weapons systems we will gradually undermine the sniper’s confidence in his tools. We will also deliver him free promotional materials from rival manufacturers showing the latest alternative rifles posed with scantily dressed women, thereby damaging his effectiveness as a man/soldier. Prolonged exposure to these opposing images will prove psychologically damaging and in time reduce his effectiveness by 45%.

Brain warrior: simple over ambition introduces a flaw into the deployment of this telepathic co-ordination of the defence. Seeking only the most powerful defenders our security people have, of course, chosen a Suicide Porpoise but these fishy mammals have large brains and are known to be at least as intelligent as some security guards. Over time the effort of communicating with this Porpoise will take up a greater part of the telepath’s resources, especially once the fish begins to seriously ask why it should kill itself security is breached. We do not the believe that the latent pacifism of these animals has ever truly been successfully suppressed.

Ninja: The training of the Ninja is justifiably famed for its rigour and thoroughness.

Nevertheless Ninjas have weaknesses like other people and as the part of the defence team most exposed to human contact in the reception of deliveries we shall concentrate on appealing to the deeply suppressed human nature of this secret killer. To this end we shall employ the services of an attractive and winning lady ninja to win his confidence first with a little ninja small talk building to a frank heart to heart ninja talk. This confidence could permit large gains (we turn the ninja and he kills Mr. Drudge at our lady ninja’s request) or small omissions (we discover his nut allergy and he fails to talk the poisoned peanut butter...)

Animals - additionally to the intensive work on the human defenders of the compound we shall undertake a programme of kindness and co-option on the animals: regular choco-drops for the dogs, in stark contrast to their treatment from their keepers, will soon win them to our side; whale music played ultrasonically to the Suicide Porpoise will make it question the violence and futility of its allotted role.

Taken together this close attention to the flaws in Mr. Drudge’s security will soon reveal an opportunity that you may be sure we would not be slow in exploiting - fatally.

Our Judges: Wilburforce Richardson and Oliver Smallbridge.

the vacuum THE VACUUM

SAFE CRACKING

By Tim Hunkin In the last twenty years, the craft of safe cracking has tragically declined. It is no longer the glamorous activity featured in every other detective film, and the number of real criminal attacks on safes has fallen dramatically.

At first glance a modern safe does look totally impregnable. The two locks, (one key and one combination) do not themselves open the door, they merely release the elaborate bolt mechanism.

This pushes 50mm steel bolts out in all directions, securing every side of the safe door, even the hinge side. It is no use chopping the hinges off a safe, the bolts will still hold it as firmly shut as ever. If it looks virtually impossible to get in through the door, getting in through the walls or the back is no easier.

They are about four inches thick, an inner and outer skin of steel, with the cavity between filled with extra strong concrete. The enormous weight of a safe makes it very difficult for thieves to carry it off, whole – it also makes the door very dangerous. Its extreme weight gives it such momentum when closing that it becomes a guillotine, chopping any fingers caught between door and frame.

Larger bank vault doors are often circular, with bolts that shoot out all round the edge.

The reason for circular doors is simply that they are easier to make. Both door and frame can be cut accurately round on a large lathe to make them a snug fit. Getting a rectangular door to fit closely at every point is more difficult, particularly with its enormous weight, which can cause distortion.

Behind the door, bank vaults are massive, built in concrete structures. Criminals have had some success tunnelling their ways in. Adam Worth, a cerebrated Victorian criminal, made his initial fortune tunnelling into a bank in Boston. He then moved to England with his accomplice Piano Charlie where they both fell for an irish barmaid prostitute called Kitty Flynn. She eventually married Piano Charlie, but continued to sleep with both. Worth masterminded a huge variety of crimes in Britain, including stealing an entire diamond shipment from the Kimberley mines, and was not caught until 40 years later. He then, with his exploits publicised, became the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes’ adversary Moriarty. Both Worth and Piano Charlie died in poverty, but Kitty became a rich and litigious widow in New York.

Anyway, to counter the threat of tunnelling bank vaults started to incorporate ‘patrol passages’ round the outside to check no one is attempting to tunnel their way in. The invincibility of bank safes is so convincing that they are quite often left on open display (less so in Britain than most other parts of the world) as proof of the security of your money.

Mies Van De Ruhe designed a particularly elegant bank in Torronto called the ’Transparent Bank’.

The need to keep precious and valuable possessions ‘safe’ is nothing new. The modern safe is directly descended from the medieval chests, now often found in museums and churches, used as collecting boxes. These chests were beautifully decorated, at first mainly made of wood, with iron hinges, locks and strappings. Later ones were entirely made of iron. The lids often had elaborate bolt work, like a modern safe. For extra security the keyhole would often be hidden under a secret flap, or disguised as part of the decoration. A few even had knives which shot out if the lock was tampered with. I’ve always admired these chests, they were obviously such important objects, so when my sister, who lived in Brixton, got burgled some years ago, I decided to make one for her. Large locks are great things to make, turning the key makes a wonderfully satisfying clunk, much better than any modern mass produced lock. To surprise the burglar, I incorporated a device

that released a small explosive charge inside the lock when the key was turned, unless one of the side handles was first lifted. My hope was that this would be so unnerving that he would then run away. Unfortunately I never found whether it worked, my sister moved out of Brixton and hasn’t been burgled since.

Building elaborate chests continued well into the 19th century. The price dropped dramatically as they started to be made of cast iron, an idea which dates from 1780, following the craze for cast iron coffins. There are some records of complaints as wrought iron was replaced by cast iron, the artistry of the blacksmith replaced by crude mass production, but that’s progress. Early in the 19th century one key idea was introduced, the double skin. It was realised that 100mm of insulation between the outer wall and the inner wall would provide great thermal insulation and protect the contents if caught in a fire.

The most common insulation used was sawdust, though even greater protection came from filling the gap with water, an idea patented by Thomas Milner in 1830 (Milner is to this day one of the main British safe companies). The name ‘safe’ came from these new fireproof cabinets. At the time it was seen as astonishing that the contents of these safes could survive the heat of a fire (they were sometimes called Salamanders) and safe companies often staged public demonstrations, mounting their safes on large bonfires. Strauss was actually commissioned to write some music for one of these events, he called it the ‘Feufest Polka’. In fact, sitting on top of a bonfire is not a particularly severe test for a safe, real fires in buildings are often much larger and leave the safe buried under hot rubble for hours. Most modern safes will protect the contents against almost any fire – there is a famous example of a safe 300 metres from the centre of the atomic blast at Hiroshima, whose contents survived intact.

Cast iron was not the ideal material to use for victorian fireproof safes, it was too brittle.

If a safe fell any distance in a fire it would certainly shatter. For this reason most safes came to be made of flat iron plates, riveted together into a box. This was a very strong form of construction, practically all large Victorian engineering feats used rivets – bridges, steam engines, ships etc. Even boilers with high pressure steam inside, were riveted together.

Used in safes though, rivets had a fatal flaw. In the

1860s there were a series of robberies, particularly one in the city of London from the Cornhill Insurance Company, in which the thieves simply broke the rivets and peeled open the top of the safe. Breaking the heads off rivets is surprisingly quick and easy – you simply insert a cold chisel under the head and hit it with a large hammer. Fortunately the quality of steel was gradually improving, (it was becoming more ductile), and by 1900 a method of bending the outside walls of a safe from a single sheet of steel had been perfected. This bending process, which could be done with up to 12mm thick steel, produced the rounded edges and corners that have characterised safes ever since, even though safes today are square boxes again, made of flat plates welded together.

With the structure of the safe improved, attention turned to the locks. The medieval chests had very impressive looking locks, and even more impressive looking keys. Inside the lock, the key passes through a ward, a plate cut to a negative of the profile of the key. The top edge of the key then pulls the lock’s bolt back, opening it up. Although it would be very difficult to make an exact copy of the real key, anything the right height that will fit through the ward will open the lock. Minimal fake keys like this came to be called skeleton keys. Because of this weakness more secure ‘lever locks were introduced in the 18th century, culminating in the ‘unpickable’ lock invented by Joseph Bramah in 1784. Bramah was a prolific inventor, he invented the hydraullic press and the WC amongst other things. Amazingly, his lock is still manufactured today, virtually unchanged, in the UK, I recently bought one for about £100. The key is a cylinder with tiny grooves cut in it.

No skeleton key could open his lock and it remained infallible for 67 years, until it was finally opened at the 1851 Great Exhibition by an American locksmith called Hobbs. Instead of a skeleton key Hobbs used a selection of picks. The principle of picking a lock is to insert two thin springy strips of metal into the keyhole, one applies a small turning force, while the other ‘feels’ the various pins or levers, lifting them inside the lock. When one reaches the right height, a small ‘give’ can be felt in the turning pick. With luck, as long as the turning force is maintained, the pin will stay raised while the feeler pick works on the next pin. This is not easy to do – the process has been described as being like Sysiphus; you just get

to the last pin and then something slips and they all fall back and you have to start all over again. I have never managed to do it.

It took Hobbs 51 hours to pick Bramah’s lock. The reason for Hobbs perseverance was to convince people of the superiority of his own ‘Champion Parautoptic Bank Lock’ (Paraupoptic means preventing internal inspection). In fact Hobb’s lock did less well than Bramah’s, it was picked within 5 years by another American locksmith called Linus Yale, simply using a wooden key. One distressed bank manager wrote; ‘ Mr Yale picked my ten tumbler (Hobbs) lock, the finest of its kind, for which I paid $300. He cut a wooden key solely from inspection of the lock through the keyhole, which turned the bolt back as readily as my own key would have done. And then, to complete my discomforture, he cut away one bit of his wooden key and locked it so I could have never again unlocked it with my own key.’ Like Hobbs, Yale had his own design of Champion bank lock. (This game, revealling the lack of security of the rivals products is very similar to today’s game, cracking computer encryption software). Yale’s son, another Linus Yale, wanted to become a portrait painter, but eventually followed his father, inventing the standard ‘Yale’ lock used on front doors ever since.

Though Yale senior’s champion bank lock was never picked, he later decided that it was in theory pickable, as is any lock which leaves its pins or levers exposed through sight or feeling through the keyhole. For this reason, he changed tack and invented a combination lock – with no keyhole.

Perhaps because it was an American invention, combination locks are to this day more popular in America than in Europe.

The principle of picking a lock is to insert two thin springy strips of metal into the keyhole, one applies a small turning force, while the other ‘feels’ the various pins or levers, lifting them inside the lock.

A combination lock is elegantly simple inside, I made a crude model of one in a couple of hours.

There’s no way of picking a lock like this without any keyhole. It also obvious that there’s no click or other noise as the tumblers reach their correct position, the only noise is when the lever finally descends into the slot, once the right combination has been dialled in. I used to think the use of stethoscopes was a big myth of safe cracking, until a couple of years ago when a real safe cracker introduced himself at the end of my lecture. He told me the stethoscope is only useful when used in conjunction with a large dial and pointer fixed to the safe (something I’ve certainly never seen in the movies) It's a slow process which takes hours, listening to the slight noise of the lever touching the tumblers and marking where the pointer is on the dial, then moving the tumblers a bit between each reading. With hundreds of readings, its possible to ‘map’ the very slight eccentricity of the tumblers - the lever is unlikely to touch all three simultaneously. Once you know which of the tumblers the lever is touching, its relatively simple to find the

THE VACUUM

exact combination. The safecracker I met was an electronics engineer who had been automating the process for a gang.

However, there are other less elaborate ways to crack a combination lock. The nobel prize winning physicist, Richard Feynman, became very interested in combination locks while working on the atomic bomb in Los Alomos during the Second World War. The scientists were rarely allowed to leave the site, so there wasn’t much to do when he wasn’t working, and safe cracking became a sort of hobby.

As the project was all top secret, every office had combination locks on its filing cabinets. Feynman first discovered, playing with the locks on his own filing cabinet, that the numbers did not have to be that precise, each one could be up to two digits either side of the true number and the lock would still open. This enormously reduced the number of possible combinations (from 1,000,000 down to 8,000). With practice he found he could try 400 different combinations in half an hour, so trying every single combination it would take on average 4 hours to open the lock. A modern version of this, advertised on the internet, is a motorised German device that turns the dial, trying every combination in turn, for use by locksmiths trying to get into a safe whose combination has been lost.

Feynman’s next technique depended on his visiting an office during the day, while the lock was open. While chatting to the occupant of the office he would idly fiddle with the lock. He turned the simply turned the dial back and forth, going one number further each time. After each number he would turn the dial back to see if the lock would still open. The number he reached when the lock first refused to open again was the first number of the combination. With a slightly more lengthy version of this he could find the second number as well.

Feynman’s final approach was to use psychology.

Surprisingly often combination locks are left on their factory settings, (usually 100, 50, 100). However, when a new combination is chosen the person entrusted with it lives in fear of forgetting it. So, people tend to use numbers they know, like their birthday, or their phone number. At Los Alamos the scientists often used mathematical constants like pi. If anyone does choose random numbers, they are almost certain to write them down somewhere, often thinly disguised in address books. By the end of the war Feynman had a record of almost everyone’s combination and a fearsome reputation as a safecracker.

Although it is possible to ‘crack’ a combination lock, its rarely a method used by criminals, or even by safe manufacturers called to open a safe whose combination has been lost. Many safes have time locks, so even if the combination is cracked, the safe will not open outside office hours. All post offices have time locks on their safes. Many safes also have a simple microswitch inside the combination lock connected to the alarm system to trigger it whenever the dial is turned. For these reasons, most attempts to break into safes by-pass the lock altogether. One method is to ‘drill’ the door. With engineering drawings of the bolt mechanism, it is possible to find a point on the safe door to drill through. A screwdriver can then be pushed through and manipulated to release the bolt mechanism – by-passing the combination lock altogether. Without precise knowledge of the mechanism, it is almost impossible to find the right place to drill, particularly because special extra hard, drill resistant materials are used around the vulnerable lock area. These extra hard materials include Tungsten carbide and ceramics – the materials used as cutters in modern machine tools. There’s also sometimes a layer of ordinary steel washers or ball bearings. These aren’t

particularly hard, but they spin round when a drill bit touches them, so are almost impossible to cut through. There’s one story of a bungled attack on a safe in which the thieves kept having to fetch cans of coke from a nearby drinks machines to pour over the drill bits in an attempt to keep them cool.

The safe was discovered, unopened, the next day, surrounded by empty cans and broken drill bits embedded in the door.

The extra hard layers could quite easily be incorporated over the entire lock area, making drilling completely impossible. However drilling is the normal method used by safe manufacturers when called to open up their safes, so I suspect manufacturers must deliberately leave a gap somewhere.

He started simply prising the back off an old riveted safe in the Fyffes banana factory, but soon progressed after robbing a welsh quarry of gelignite and detonators.

A popular alternative to ‘drilling’ safes is to use explosives. Gunpowder was used with some success in 19th century America, simply pouring it in through the keyhole. The shock burst the front plate of the door open, making the bolt mechanism accessible. There was a simple solution to this form of attack, the ‘powderproof’ lock. This was a close fitting tin box round the lock which simply limited the amount of gunpowder that could be poured in. With only a small amount of gunpowder, the force of the explosion was not great enough to burst open the door. The introduction of much more powerful ‘high explosives’ presented more of a challenge, particularly after the first world war, when many soldiers with first-hand experience of using them returned to civilian life. It was during the 20s and thirties that safecracking gained its notoriety.

Perhaps the star safecracker of this golden age was a man called Chapman. He started simply prising the back off an old riveted safe in the Fyffes banana factory, but soon progressed after robbing a Welsh quarry of gelignite and detonators. Gelignite was a commercial high explosive of the same family as nitroglycerine and trinitrotoluene. It was a plastic explosive (mouldable), with the consistency and smell of oily marzipan. (All the older high explosives smelt similar, semtex was the first to have no smell).

Chapman’s technique was ingeniously simple. He kept to relatively basic safes, (particularly keen on robbing those in those in Odeon cinemas). He first tied the office typewriter to the boltwork handle. He then wrapped a tiny amount of Gelignite with a detonator inside a condom, pushed it through the keyhole, and held everything in place with chewing gum. A few grams was all that was needed, he said his most common mistake was to use too much. Retreating to a safe distance, the small explosion, pushing everything momentarily outwards, was enough to lift the levers restraining the bolt mechanism. The weight of the typewriter would then simply turn the mechanism, opening the safe.

Chapman robbed about 40 safes up and down the country through the thirties and was finally caught in Jersey in 39, just before the outbreak of war.

Jersey was invaded by the Germans before he had been brought back to Britain and he was recruited as an agent, but he told the British authorities of his new role and became a double agent. After the war he was pardoned, for ‘services to his country’, and started a successful health farm (he eventually bought a castle in Ireland on the proceeds).

By the 1950s safe manufacturers had started fitting devices to counter high explosives.

A steel cable running round the inside of the door was connected to the lever that released the boltwork. Along this cable were several small plates of toughened glass. Any explosion would shatter the glass, releasing the cable and jamming the lever in the closed position. All high quality safes have been fitted with ‘anti-explosive’ devices like this ever since and explosives are no longer a practical method of getting into a safe.

If opening a safe door by drilling or explosives is impractical, perhaps a better technique is to ignore the door and to and break straight through the walls. When the rounded one-piece steel casing was introduced at the turn of the century, it was virtually impregnable, but many new cutting tools have since been invented. The latest weapon of the 1920s was the oxyacetylene cutter. The oxyacetylene flame itself was the hottest flame ever achieved, but the extra jet of oxygen blown through the cutter onto preheated steel caused the steel itself to ignite, enabling plates of any thickness to be effortlessly sliced through. The hardness of the steel makes no difference to the ease of cutting. Safe manufacturers increasingly relied on the concrete in between the inner and outer steel skin for security, though it wasn’t long before the introduction of a device that could even burn through concrete. This was the thermic lance, which is simply a long tube filled with steel rods, connected to an oxygen supply. Once preheated, the steel at the end of the tube can be ignited (just as in oxyacetylene cutting) and will gradually burn away, producing extremely high temperatures, enough to melt concrete.

On high security safes manufacturers today usually incorporate a layer of cast aluminium.

This conducts heat very well, dissipating the heat of the lance, and slowing down the cutting process. (A twelve inch thick plate of copper dissipates heat so effectively it is impossible to cut through, but would cost so much the safe would probably be worth more than its contents). Some safe manufacturers incorporate a material that gives off lots of smoke when heated, at least making working conditions uncomfortable Fortunately for safe manufacturers there is a more serious snag about using thermic lances. A few years ago, there was a rash of crimes in which thieves removed entire safes to open them at leisure without fear of being disturbed. The safes were found, abandoned, having been attacked with thermic lances, but the theives had obviously not got away with anything, because the contents were still inside, completely incinerated. Paper burns at quite a low temperature, 180c or more famously 451f of Ray Bradbury’s novel. (Incidentally, its no use trying to use a thermic lance on a safe door, the steel cable, in addition to its glass plates, also has fusible links, (low melting point alloys) so any heat inside the door jams the opening mechanism.)

It probably is a good idea to try and remove the whole safe however you try to break into it, but it isn’t easy. Safes are very heavy, partly for this reason. With older safes it was possible to put a car jack under the hinges. With wedges and levers it was then possible to it onto a pallet truck. Today, the hinges are made with sloping bottoms, so there’s no jacking point.

Another useful tool, introduced in the 1950s, is the angle grinder. Hard particles, embedded in the disk, will cut through any steel, however hard, and also concrete. Angle grinders can cut through any padlock in seconds. Safes are more secure, simply because there’s more material to cut through, but also because manufacturers have been relatively successful in finding materials that take a long time to cut. The concrete used in safes is extra hard, made with extra finely ground sand and cement, incorporating fine high tensile steel wires to give it tensile strength and bonded to the concrete by the addition of a wetting agent. High security safes also include lumps of a mineral called aloxite (a form of Aluminium oxide) that is particularly difficult to cut through.

Despite the difficulties, a considerable number of criminal attacks on safes have been successful.

Many of the skills of safebreaking were handed on from one generation to the next (a sort of informal apprenticeship system). However, there was also a published American Commission report (from the 1890s) on the best methods of safe construction, which went into great detail has to how each model of safe could be tackled. In the twenties the Los Angeles Wayne Strong school of Safework ran courses in safe repairing and opening. More recently in the 60s, Canadian police found a classroom in a Toronto garage full of safecracking equipment and a home printed textbook, divided into instructional ‘modules’.

In the last ten years a brilliant new tool has appeared called the diamond core drill. This is simply a tube embedded with industrial diamonds, rotated by an ordinary electric drill. Diamonds, (the hardest material known) will cut through anything.

I’ve seen perfect cores cut straight through the extra hard concrete, through the aluminium, through the aloxite. (The highest rated safes are now given some protection against the core drill – lots of angled mild steel plates embedded in the concrete. The diamonds tend to get clogged by the relatively soft steel.)

This tool did have the potential to create a renaissance in safe breaking, but it somehow never happened, the art of safe breaking has been in continual decline since the 60s. A 1997 Home Office report shows that attacks on banks decreased 46% in 1994 and a further 19% in 1995. Lone criminals, acting on the spur of the moment, are replacing meticulously planned ‘professional’ operations, and the ‘craftsman’ criminal has virtually disappeared.

I suspect the main reason for the disappearance of the craftsman criminal is simply that there are fewer and fewer people with the practical skills and confidence to even try to break into a safe. Engineering apprenticeships have been decimated, and even the old metalwork shops in schools have gone, replaced by ‘craft, design and technology’, which seems to mainly involve making things of cardboard.

Today’s criminals tend to favour relatively crude techniques. If you are really only interested in the loot, its usually easier to bribe or torture someone who knows the safe’s combination. To overcome the latest home security system the favoured criminal tool is simply a brick. Throw the brick through the window, see if anyone comes, and if not, follow it in, either letting the alarm ring (or pulverising it with the brick).

To some extent the most clever and sophisticated safebreaking and lockpicking feats have always been performed by legitimate locksmiths to prove the weaknesses of their rivals’ products, or, like Richard Feynman, out of intellectual curiosity.

In a similar way almost all the sophisticated computer hacking is done out of intellectual curiosity, or by companies marketing improved security systems, and not by criminals.

Another factor contributing to the decline in safebreaking is that the rewards are relatively modest. The average haul from bank raids in 1993 for example, was only £3,743, in contrast to the average haul from security vans of £378,479. The insurance companies give every safe a rating for the value that they are prepared to insure the contents for. This is surprisingly low - £5,000 for an older standard safe, up to £50,000 for the most sophisticated modern safe. To determine a safe’s rating, the insurance companies have a research laboratory at Boreham Wood (called the Loss Prevention Council). Members of the council, sitting round a sort of bullring, dressed in safety visors, take notes while watching engineers attempt to break into each safe.

Points are awarded for the number and sophistication of tools employed, and the length of time taken.

It is performed in strict privacy, but would obviously be great entertainment. I hope that as the criminal incentive and appetite for safe breaking has largely disappeared, it could be revived as a hobby and competitive sport. The trophies for winning contestants could simply be put in every safe beforehand.

For more information on Tim Hunkin see www.timhunkin.com

the vacuum THE VACUUM

The Not-So-Great Firewall of China

By Caoilinn Hughes The information-censoring craze of totalitarian China reached paranoid heights in 2000, with the installation of the 'Great Firewall' Internet blocking software. This bowdlerising system epitomises the central government’s perverse fear of free information. The Chinese population have been 'protected' by their oh-so-very paternal President, Hu Jintao, against 'subversive or immoral material' such as the Rolling Stones’ sexually oriented lyrics, reality TV, Barcardi.com, lesbian.com, CNN, NBC, the Washington Post, websites that cover topics such as Tibetan independence, Taiwan independence, police brutality, freedom of speech, democracy and Marxist sites, including Voice of America, BBC News, and Yahoo! Hong Kong.

When Mountain-View, California-based Google compromised its principles by accommodating Chinese censoring demands in January ‘06, many fears about the blindness of twenty-first century commerce were validated. The Chinese-language site, Google.cn, omits 'politically sensitive' information, such as details about the June 1989 suppression of political unrest in Tiananmen Square. The visit to Beijing of Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, coincided with the release of a staunchly conservative statement by China’s official Internet industry association. The 2,600 member, 5-year-old group stated that 'unhealthy information' online has harmed Chinese children and threatens social stability: 'We should not produce, disseminate and spread information that harms state security, social stability and information that violates laws and regulations and social morality'. And here the big-brainwashing-brother party-purity ideology emerges. Schmidt defended Google’s principles and, in turn, COIIA’s, by arguing that it would be 'arrogant for us to walk into a country where we are just beginning to operate and tell that country how to operate'. He also pointed out that Google’s site in Germany is barred from linking to Nazi-oriented material. And, obviously, CNN is just as threatening to social stability as access to a strategy to instigate a puritan stratocracy. Google would have a hard time if Peter Haine suddenly became precious about politically sensitive material.

[If Chinese morals are sensitive, seemingly so too are American stomachs. When the strident outcries of a Falun Gong protestor—Dr. Wenyi Wang, a journalist for the Epoch Times—interrupted President Bush’s White House reception for Hu Jintao in April, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer booked her for an interview immediately. She stated in a later interview, however, that a CNN producer had warned her not to discuss Beijing’s gruesome practice of organ harvesting… because it was dinnertime. She was told not to bring up what had been the main impetus for her one-woman protest in the first place. It seems that Bush and Jintao have some things in common: a sense of irony, and a conspiracy of silence.]

Although Google has received much criticism from human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch, and media groups such as Reporters Without Borders, for accommodating Chinese information suppression, U.S.-based software companies (Cisco Systems, Narus Inc., and Canadian-based Nortel Networks) are also culpable for providing the People’s Armed Police

(PAP) with tracking and monitoring systems. Nortel has provided the Chinese Ministry of State Security a system with which they can keep nearly half of China’s 111 million Internet users under surveillance. Both Yahoo and Microsoft agreed to incorporate “modifications” in their products that restrict Chinese consumers’ access to certain databases and Internet sites. In fact, Hu Jintao opened his U.S. trip by meeting with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates—a model, self-censored partisan.

The list of U.S. companies currently affiliated with and attending to the Chinese government’s censoring schemes is extensive. Some would argue that these systems are standard Internet infrastructure, without which, the PRC government might ban the Internet altogether. This equipment, therefore, aids the flow of information. However, human rights advocates such as HRW point out that if companies stopped contributing to the authorities’ censorship efforts, the government would be forced to change. This also seems unlikely, since even Google’s CEO acknowledged that “Chinese Universities are now churning out a very large number of very, very good programmers.” China will eventually produce its own Internet infrastructure, and it will be a one-way, cost-effective system.

No diesel.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has blocked access to certain TV channels in its Chinese satellite distribution network to placate Chinese officials.

Those channels must have been host to 'You’re a Star', or 'American Idol', or red China’s version, 'Supergirl Voice', which has been pulled off the air by strict new government rules. Apparently, it was not dedicated to 'constructing a harmonious socialist society', as the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television necessitates. According to the Chinese government, TV shows must 'avoid creating stars' and 'avoid vulgar or gross styles'.

Something tells me that Hu wouldn’t have much time for Chico! This is all to protect state security, social stability, and social morality, remember.

And somehow, Internet phone calls, news stations, definitions, brown sugar, honky tonk women, and wannabe pop-stars, all come under and are thrown into the paradoxically protective flames of Chinese administration.

This July, computer experts from the University of Cambridge found that it was possible to evade the Chinese intrusion detection systems by ignoring the forged transmission control protocol resets injected by the Chinese routers (supplied by Cisco), which would normally force the endpoints to abandon the connection. 'The machines in China allow data packets in and out, but send a burst of resets to shut connections if they spot particular keywords', explained Richard Clayton of the Cambridge computer laboratory. 'If you drop all the reset packets at both ends of the connection, which is relatively trivial to do, the Web page is transferred just fine.' Although Clayton’s report becomes impenetrable after this point, it turns out that the firewall is not. Perhaps it is not even bulletin-proof. It is easily circumvented by using proxy servers outside the firewall. Some Chinese citizens use the Google Mirror elgooG since China blocked Google. ElgooG survived because firewall operators thought it was not a fully functional

version of Google.

One of the most shocking aspects of the Great Firewall security mania is the amount of arrests that have been made under the designation of a 'threat to social stability'. The Government regulations (issued 01/10/00, Article 15.2) banned the

One of the most shocking aspects of the Great Firewall security mania is the amount of arrests that have been made under the designation of a “threat to social stability”. dissemination of any 'information that endangers national security, divulges state secrets, subverts the government, or undermines national security', you see. There is now an Internet police force of over 30,000 people, dedicated to monitoring websites and e-mails, in search of 'cyber dissidents'.

Steve Ballinger of Amnesty International said in January: 'Amnesty International is aware of at least 64 cyber dissidents who are imprisoned right now just for peacefully expressing their opinions online, whether it’s on an e-mail or a website.' Freedom of belief without fear of system persecution is one of the tenets of socialism. This is the same socialist system by which Chinese 'dissidents' are sentenced to serve up to 10 years, the very reason for their arrests being that their beliefs do not correspond to those of the 'harmonious socialist system'. The Chinese population must keep pursuing uncen-

sored means of communication, for its sense of free speech and human rights. Internet blogs remain spaces of complete discretion. Michael Anti’s blog is renowned for being one of China’s true sources of information. According to both Anti and, more recently, Cambridge University, the authorities can be beaten at their own game. If U.S. companies keep advancing and supplying software detection systems, the Chinese people must keep developing their technologies to fend off the government’s coercion.

It is perhaps damaging to China’s reputation as a progressing, thriving nation that Western media is paying so much attention to the censorship issue, especially when there are so many other important and positive things happening on the Chinese Internet. However, Western media is very disturbed by the actuality of such a despotic dystopia in the 21st century, for commercial as well as human rights reasons. Perhaps even more disturbed by the U.S.’s compliance with China’s communist directive… for the sake of capital. Then again, if capital constituted enough of a reason to invade Iraq, it justifies compromising our principles with regard to freedom of thought, speech, and information.

THE VACUUM

REVIEWS

Belfast City Hall Tour It’s easy to overlook the architectural merit of the City Hall. On a Saturday afternoon, it’s even easier. Your view is likely to be blocked by the heavily eyelined and fishnet clad hordes that for some inexplicable reason hang about outside. Yet even these most avid fans of the renaissance-styled, Italian marble home of our enlightened city councillors were noticeably absent on this opportunity to have a look around the inside of the building.

To begin the tour we stood around the thrillingly entitled “large mat” in the main hall, on which one could find the much-trodden-over coat of arms for our dear city, and had a good look around at some carpeted stairs and listened to copper-dome related trivia. The height of the dome was given helpfully in both feet and metres, in case standing under it wasn’t illustrative enough of how high it is off the ground.

Onwards we traipsed, school trip style, up the stairs to the west end of the building, where portraits of past Lord Mayors stare down from the walls around you. Some of these portraits held the (dis)honour of being some the most ghastly paintings I’ve had the misfortune to set eyes upon. It’s unclear who to lay the blame on, artist or sitter. One recent Sinn Fein mayor’s portrait could be mistaken for a brochure for a leisure centre, with Belfast City Council’s logo and trademark turquoise and darker blue providing the background. But what alarmed me the most about the whole portrait episode of the tour was that, although glaringly obvious political statements are made in some of them, the tour guides claimed they were unable to pass any comment on the political content.

They can, however dismiss the Alliance Party as being “very middle of the road”. Oh, and point out the table (notably kept in the council chamber) on which the Solemn League and Covenant was signed. Don’t go asking where the Solemn League and Covenant is, though. My genuinely intrigued companion unfortunately did so, and received the indignant response that it was kept in the Ulster Unionist headquarters because, after all, “he was the father of unionism”.

This mysterious “he” was never actually named. Also, despite numerous references to it, the reason why the Great Hall was destroyed in 1941 was not explained either. The Belfast Blitz may seem like the obvious reason to you and I, but the Spanish and American families on the tour with us may not be so familiar with Belfast wartime history.

The culmination of this most informative tour was supposed to be tea with the Lord Mayor but he was off doing something undoubtedly far more important and was unable to attend. (Incidentally, if you are going to allow people access to your civic dressing room you might want to make sure the sink has been cleaned.) Admittedly, the whole thing was not a complete embarrassment. Had the Lord Mayor turned up it would have made the evening more of an event for the tourists. But the building itself is something to be proud of, and our tour guides threw themselves into their performance with gusto. And visitors did get to try on councillors robes, which provided many laughs and photo opportunities for the children and non-natives present.

But my main concern was the lack of historical or political context in which the tour was given, a real missed opportunity for our visitors to have an insight into the complexities of Norn Iron’s culture. These idiosyncrasies were conveniently swept under the carpet for the evening. The absurdity of the situation was illustrated neatly by a large framed photograph of two members of the DUP sitting proudly beneath the old “Belfast Says No” banner, poking out from behind a strategically placed, oversized flower arrangement. If history is your thing, look elsewhere. Unless of course, you’re only interested in how many degrees of separation there are between any given item of furniture in the building and the RMS Titanic.

By Laura Garland

City Dance 06 Annual Midsummer Dance Festival Lower Crescent Park 24/6/06 Everything from ballet to Bollywood to break dancing was on offer at City Dance: there were as many different styles of dancing on display as there are festivals in Belfast. But how many festivals does one city need? Would this one simply be a waste of time and money and another case of Belfast clutching at cultural straws, or could it offer Belfast citizens a taste of something genuinely different?

At their best, festivals can reflect the varied colour and life of a city. At their worst, they can be incredibly drab, pompous, superficial and full of pretension. Quite frankly I’d rather be spanked with a dead octopus than undergo again the celebration of Belfast ‘culture’ that has been served up recently. There are now more than 50 different festivals taking place in Belfast every year – showcasing everything from literature to film, art to sport, cuisine to language. That’s the equivalent of almost one festival for every week of the year.

But to my pleased surprise, there was no need for the dead octopus after attending City Dance.

With an infectiously pleasurable atmosphere, the one thing that particularly struck me throughout was the look of pure delight and euphoria on the faces of the performers. They had all been participants in the workshops organised by the Crescent Arts Centre throughout the year, and those had obviously been good fun.

Unfortunately, the marquee lacked a stage for the dancers and this proved difficult for the spectators, as it was often hard to see what was happening.

Traditional dances from all over the globe were on display. These included Banghra, Flamenco, tap dancing, jazz dancing, set dancing, interpretative dancing, Mexican Folk dancing, Greek dancing and even Hawaiian dancing (which apparently is poetry expressed through movement and is drenched with metaphorical overtones. The piece performed was rather delightfully called ‘My Pleasant and Gentle Breeze’).

City Dance opened with Urban Fusion, a group of body-popping girls in their early teens. This spectacle was to be the template for the rest of a day filled with eccentric hybrids of movement and culture, all of which were strangely mesmerising. Other acts included The Dizzy Kids, hyperactive, tiny children wearing butterfly wings, playing with hula hoops and generally running amok; Isis, modern Egyptian belly dancing; the Orbit Dance Company, a contemporary troupe with a particularly moving piece set to the irregular and unsettling beats of Aphex Twin; and the ethereal, tranquil, slow-motion movements of a Tai Chi group.

And yes, it was all as wonderfully eclectic as it sounds.

City Dance turned out to be a great addition to the glut of festivals currently pumping through the culturecluttered veins of Belfast. It was a celebration and an embrace of our city’s growing diversity. It also recognised that one of the things we all have in common, as members of the humans race, is that we love to strut our stuff and get down. And that can only be a good thing.

By James Gracey

Merchant Hotel Waring Street Belfast

In a way it is a good thing that Belfast can sustain this kind of facility, but there is something deeply uncomfortable about the new complex of hospitality edifices that have sprung up slap bang in the middle of the Cathedral Quarter ™. Moving left to right we have the Cloth Ear. Let’s face it the Cloth Ear could be any pub in any part of town that’s been built in the last 5 years. Lots of bare wood, balsa moose heads and ‘quirky’ fittings. Generic to a fault and symptomatic of the kind of place that puts it’s minimum wage staff in an undignified long smock. Next up, the bar where the staff wear hair-coats. Get me a drink serf!

Then there is the actual hotel itself. Now this place really is the beans. Taking that awesomely intimidating walk up the stairs and the gilded decadence of the grand hall you can tell that a rumoured £10 million was spunked up the (cloth wallpapered) wall. It’s a money pit here. Walking through the near empty dining area (which, at that time had about all the atmosphere of a maharajah’s aircraft hanger) into the bar, my imbibing colleague and myself proceeded to order our drinks. At which point we were informed it was sitting room only. If we would care to be seated they would only be too happy to serve us. Two Gin and Tonics were then ordered in an attempt to remain inconspicuous. Ten minutes elapsed before said drinks were delivered and the time was occupied by flicking through the drinks list, but more about that later. A further ten minutes elapsed before the meagre change from a £20 was returned to us. One drink later and I proceeded to the toilet, which reminded me of the toilets in St James’ Palace (don’t ask, long story). Except in one respect. Tucked in behind the ‘throne’ was (without mincing my words) a pair of shitted underpants. It was one of those ‘What’s that?’ moments that immediately precedes a stifled heave.

Being the considerate guy I am, I informed the staff of the ‘unsavoury item in the gentlemen’s bathroom’. I was informed that it would be dealt with.

A foray into the attached nightclub, ‘Ollie’s’ was disappointing to say the least. A lady in Edwardian gear had approached us earlier on that night promising us free entry and cabaret. Now, I don’t know if Bob Fosse or Baz Luhrmann have lied to me but I thought there was more to cabaret than some dolly bird in a black dress waving a saxophone round her head.

Now, remember that drinks list I mentioned?

We have on it a cocktail. A cocktail whose main ingredient is a spirit so rare there are only five bottles in existence. And the cost to you? A cool £750. Not for the bottle, for a drink. The guts of 4 months’ rent for me, the average monthly income for a full time minimum wage slave. And you know, they will never sell one. The bottle is held as an investment, an asset of the company. And as soon as the seal goes on the bottle it’s worthless. You see what I’m getting at here?

I propose a scheme where you, the reader can buy a share in this drink. Merely pledge the sum of £10 and we shall all head down to the Merchant en masse of a night and order one of these obscene creations. I need 75 people. Not for ‘the people’, not for any ideological reasons, but just for shits and giggles. Let’s do it.

By Shane Horan (with thanks to Simon McCance)

the vacuum THE VACUUM

Rottfest Clarendon Dock 6/6/06 What’s the difference between a heavy metal fan and a goth? None whatsoever as far as I can tell: their leather trews are bound to leave both with smelly genitals, and both were in equal attendance at Rottfest, Belfast’s first ever open-air heavy metal festival. Rottfest was less a terrifying spectacle of cock-rock and satan-schmoozing, more a school outing for emo kids with (shock!) swearwords on their t-shirts. Whatever. These bands played death metal, black metal, nu metal, stoner metal (surely an oxymoron?), and probably a new undefined genre of metal.

I don’t know what they were singing about. That could either be down to poor sound engineering, or perhaps my untrained ear was incapable of deciphering the manly growls and screams. 'Death', 'hate' and 'kill' were definitely heard several times.

If the reports of explicit sexism are correct, they were probably part of a sentence that was not very nice about women. Even if the lyrics were questionable, the 10% or so of women present didn’t seem bothered; some even eagerly joined in the proceedings in the mosh pit (in which a few moshers suffered grazed knees - that’s no way for our future generation of lawyers, doctors and engineers to behave!)

Injuries were not the only problem at the fest: issues with the Port of Belfast and residents of Clarendon Dock meant that the playlist had to be cut by 45 minutes. Local band Bad Boat were unlucky enough to get the chop - informed while they were setting up on stage. Factoring in the young demographic of the audience that were not permitted to drink, the skint demographic that were reluctant to pay the festival prices, it was hard to see how Rottfest was a commercial success. If nothing else, I suppose it proved that such an event can (just about) be held somewhere other than the ubiquitous Custom House Square. Apart than that, the weather was nice, the rain held off, and it was pretty cool to see such a line-up of bands play in an outdoor venue in Belfast. Shame it won’t be staged for another 100 years.

By Stuart Fallis

Finals of Miss Belfast 2006 Zen Restaurant, Belfast

Stop the Fwoarr!

'Miss Belfast' is not just advice from the Rough Guide to Ireland. It is also the name of a beauty contest. Although initially Miss Informed, I was soon appraised of the fact that Miss Belfast and Miss Northern Ireland are not the same person.

The situation is analogous to the way that the protestant and catholic Gods are completely separate deities. Miss Belfast (aka Miss North of Ireland or Miss Teague) is a regional heat for the national title of Miss Ireland who then graduates to Miss World. Miss Northern Ireland, on the other foot, is a national final where the winners of such titles as Miss Maghera, Miss The Moy and Miss The Point compete to represent The Province at Miss World.

Regardless of creed all contestants are Orange.

A certain phone company was therefore eager to sponsor the event and was in competition with Ronseal Quick Drying Wood Stain to get the deal.

However a local Ford dealership won out and adapted their founder Henry Ford’s tagline to read: “ You can be any colour so long as it’s Panetone 021”. Not that I’m prejudiced against coloureds.

Some of my best friends are russet. From the

fresh tsunami of fake tan to hit our shores you may assume it is a recent invention however it was accidentally discovered circa 1928 when Coco Chanel spilt her Coco Pops. Marvelling at the instant glow she’d acquired, Ms Chanel decided to take her weekly bath in a giant cereal bowl and became famous for her style and Miss Teak.

As well as being congenitally congenial, the pageant contestants are allegedly talented, intelligent and well educated. Why then do they bother to compete for a title only useful for aspiring Magicians’ Assistants, Footballers’ Wives or Lay Eucharistic Ministers (magicians’ assistant again)?

At the event I bumped into the guilelessly charming Miss Steak. Fit as a butcher’s daughter, she was unfazed by the male gaze upon her wares.

My cry of 'Stop enjoying your objectification you eejit!” went unheeded. Contrary to my assumptions of requisite bitchiness the contestants were relaxed and friendly. I do realise that is not very fair to bait nineteen year olds with big words (at that age I believed a man who told me his name was Fellatio). Nevertheless I couldn’t resist attempting the following interview in the toilets: Crusading Journalist: 'Do you think this competition is chauvinistic?'

Miss Understood proffers a blank stare and a protracted silence ensues like the delay in long distance phone call. She then points to her hip and confides perkily: 'My jeans cost £300'.

CJ: 'Do you think it is anachronistic?'

MU: 'Hmm yes, I am scared of spiders.'

CJD: 'Do you think it is old fashioned?'

MOO: 'Oh no, no, urban rustic is very this season.'

Ever wondered what happened to all those teeth you put under your pillow as a child? Beautifully beaky Christine Bleakley has them. BBC Northern Ireland’s stunning Miss Mile Smile was the evening’s presenter. The tooth fairy’s weight is doubled by heavy makeup and her lovely mouth bears a spooky resemblance to Arlington Cemetery. This apparition, combined with the act of viewing competing skeletal forms whilst sitting in a small booth, lent the evening all the ambience of the Ghost Train at Barry’s.

Christine was not the only occult figure present.

George Best had been exhumed especially, then reanimated with poteen and sparks of witty banter from UTV’s Julian. Other non-mental-judges were flown in from Crufts and the Balmoral show.

The organ grinders sized up the platter of carnal delights. Plenty of lean meat was on display. Ribs, chicken fillets, rumps and shoulders rolled down the conveyer belt under the beady eye of quality control. Having once worked on a production line, sorting Marks and Spencers strawberries from those destined for the jam factory, I felt well qualified to separate the wheat from the Chav.

A scene from a Terry Bradley painting unfolded before us. High cheekbones and low slung jeans shook in front of each booth like an abbreviated lap dance during an earthquake. Miss Out was easy to spot. Her sensible shoes had lowered her score but her drool wet t-shirt and erect nipples evened things out. Poor Miss Shapen, definitely not the bookies favourite followed Miss Down, sponsored

by Prozac. Miss Ing hadn’t shown up. Miss Plaice saw the Sushi as her main competition. Miss Is was disqualified for being married but took a philosophical attitude. Miss Rule livened things up with a bit of anarchy. She highlighted the foolish caveat that contestants cannot have given birth. Yelling “what about miscarriages, abortions and caesarean sections?” Miss Treat bribed the judges with the saucy promise of a finger of fudge. Miss Tress twirled her extensions, showing off the habitat she’d created for wildlife and jealous wives. Miss Quote said she wanted to “make history poverty” and Miss Anthropist declared an ambition to write for The Vacuum.

Here comes the pseudo science bit. Our society grades and labels from the cot to the crypt. Sports day, exams, class one strawberries and the Top-TenBest-Nostalgia-List-Programmes-Of-All-Time are all symptoms of our need to compete, sift and categorise. So is a beauty competition any more insidious

than the Nobel Peace Prize?

Pageants are not just about beauty, the judges are looking for a complete package. This is not a sign of progress. It is merely indicative of increased marketing nous. The clue is in the word “package”.

Looks and personality traits are both commodified in the search for the ultimate human promotional tool. You catch more flies with honeys but we have to love them too. The women that we wish to be like or be with are crucial cogs in a consumerist economy, encouraging us to buy stuff we don’t need.

The falling popularity of the spectacle of Miss World could be read as evidence that we are evolving. Mr and Mrs 1950s had one annual opportunity to turn on the TV and say “look at the state of her”. We have access to more titillating voyeurism on the goggle box most nights of the week, and on every shelf in the newsagents female bodies are compared and judged.

In an age when trafficking of sex slaves, genital mutilation and domestic violence are rife it is hard to get riled up by the banality of Miss Belfast.

However it is increasingly difficult to resist the message going out on most frequencies that we must fit a certain physical ideal. The ubiquitous brain washing, cleansing and toning leads to us wash our hands of political concerns. Maybe it is possible to kill two birds with one stone by putting the Millie in Militant and burning calories whilst burning flags and bras. Vigorous marching for just causes is great for shaping the gluteus maximus and brandishing placards banishes the bingo wings. Bet that bevy of beauties could shift more copies of the Socialist Worker in five minutes than two men in donkey jackets could over a five year plan. So,Miss Belfast

- do you really want world peace and an end to hunger?

By Kelly Mullan

THE VACUUM

NEW BIT OF ART COLLEGE

Agreement. Small wonder Dan Keating dismissed the Sinn Fein peace process as ‘a joke.’

As I left the cinema I noticed a former fellow republican prisoner in the departing audience. Very much a supporter of the current Sinn Fein leadership strategy, he should not have made the journey back to West Belfast with his mind uncluttered by difficult issues. If he thought about it at all, this was a film that challenged all he held dear.

Where’s the Students Union? It’s been turned into a massive atrium topped with a seagull shittened glass canopy. Connor Hall would almost certainly fit into this waste of space. Further architectural cuttings can be found as you ascend the inadequate stairwell. There is a small lift too but these appear to serve the new corporate spaces and will get bottlenecked before anyone can reach the vertiginous chute to the Orpheus Building. Might I suggest the students go to Cash and Carry and open a bar across York Street with a pool table.

By Anthony McIntyre

The Wind That Shakes the Barley It has been dismissed as a propaganda film and its director Ken Loach portrayed as a Leni Riefenstahl. Nevertheless, Loach seemed unperturbed. In promoting The Wind That Shakes the Barley he claimed that ‘partition had failed … the unionist veto on change must be removed.’ The irony is that despite Eoghan Harris’s claim that this film can be used as propaganda by Sinn Fein, it actually constitutes a challenge to what Sinn Fein so fervently embraces – the modern ‘Treaty’ that is the Good Friday Agreement.

From my experience growing up in a working class nationalist community where self-identity post1970 was formed in opposition to British troops on the streets, there was little that struck me as controversial. The opening scenes of British soldiers taking a young man ‘out the back’ and brutally murdering him, or their clubbing a train driver into the ground, resonates deeply of a myriad of similar incidents that occurred during the 1970s. The same violence, accents, arrogance, threats, contempt and racism were a defining feature of Ted Heath’s ‘squaddies’.

Loach made little attempt to explain the background to the war of independence that raged in Ireland from 1919 to 1921. He avoided everything that preceded, but crucially moulded the conditions in which that war was fought. His ahistorical starting point was the war itself and he illustrated how young men came to join the IRA, not out of any highly developed set of ideological beliefs but in direct response to British military repression on the streets. This is why the film chimes so strongly with the ‘common sense’ that many in the audiences grew up with in areas like West Belfast or the Bogside. When Dan Keating, who fought against the British during the period covered by Loach, said the film ‘brought back old memories, all right’, he spoke for more than his own generation.

If the foundational assumption that the British were wholly wrong went unexplored some of the more ideological cleavages that existed were expressed through the characters. Two of these have been the source of internal tensions throughout the long divisive lifespan of Irish republicanism: whether republicans should fight against the rich on behalf of the poor as part of the antiBritish struggle; the compromising of the ideal of republicanism when it settles for an outcome that changes only the ‘accents of the powerful and the colour of the flag.’ Loach ensured that those articulating the grievances of the poor and opposing the compromises emerged on top intellectually.

Those critics who think Sinn Fein stand to gain from such a film have got it wrong. The republicans who will have genuine cause to cheer this film from beginning to end are those who believe that the prosecution of an armed campaign is legitimate until there is no British presence in Ireland; critics of Sinn Fein such as the Real or Continutiy IRAs. The arguments made in defence of the Treaty by former IRA members who executed their erstwhile comrades who opposed it are exactly those made today in support of the Good Friday

SS NOMADIC

THE NIBBLES BOP YESTRUM A new night in Belfast at the Pavillion bar- roughly on a monthly basis. Probably the only club you’ll get to here a mix of Arthur Russell, Boris, Swell Maps,Crass and DNA in Northern Ireland. The Bop goes to show how conservative almost every other club in belfast is. For some reason there’s a showroom mummy/dummy on stage with a cutout of Jeff Goldbulm's face. The projector is some homemade modification of an overhead projector and the DJs are invisible. Easily the best club in Belfast.

Some crazy fool has decided to tow a big lump of scrap up the Lagan and put it outside the Odyssey Arena! But hold on thats not just any old hunk of junk. Its the SS Nomadic, the ship that took second class stamps to the Titanic- (its big sister) in 1908.

A mere snip at £171,320.the vessel will be restored and turned into a floating bacon straightening factory in Belfast's new Titanic Quarter area.

SPOT THE DELIBERITE MISTAKE The Vacuum’s ‘Spot The Deliberite Mistake’ competition continues to grow in popularity amongst our more eagle-eyed readers. However, in order to give more casual browsers a bit of encouragement, last months Ugly issue was a particularly easy one; it contained a number of short ‘Ugly Days’ columns, some of which were repeated three times and some twice. The underlying point of course was that repetitiveness is ugliness and ugly is repetitive.

PIZZAIDF.ORG A website dedicated to delivering assorted junkfood to Israeli soldiers serving on the Lebanese border and Gaza Strip... if you’re really keen you can even opt to feed an entire company of 90 soldiers with 18 pizzas and 18 bottles of soda for $269.75. The main picture on the site is of a group of IDF soldiers surveying what at first appears to be a well cooked Margarita but on further inspection also bears an uncanny resemblance to recent aerial photographs of southern Lebanon. Still, one has to wonder if the whole thing is a long-term Hezbollah strategy to fatten them all up with Western muck, eventually rendering them useless in the battlefield.

BONFIRE NIGHT Ah yes, it's that time of year again when Belfast City Council gives some of its citizens lots of money to burn their sofas in the middle of the road. It made for an interesting evening driving around the various sites of conflagration - droves of curious tourists headed sheepishly up the Shankill Road, youths at Annadale partied to a rave version of The Sash, but the real action was at Glenbryn where residents feasted on a spit-roasted pig. The scene resembled a sort of macabre free-for-all game of piggy-in-themiddle between Glasgow Rangers and Glasgow Rangers.

TENNENT’S VERSA Ah, Tennent’s; all things to all men. For the hardened street drinker there is SuperTennent’s, for the undiscerning masses there is Tennents Lager, and now for those who fully appreciate the subtle complexities of combining grain and chemicals there is this new ‘continental-style’ brand. It’s being marketed specifically at over-25’s so you will just ooze sophistication as you swan back from the bar with one. Considering that not many continental things come out of Scotland this isn’t a bad effort; creamy head and cold, flat body - like a fish with shaving foam all over its face.

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