True, but if I were a terrorist I'd simply let off bombs in the security areas of ten of the UK's largest airports. All that glass in Heathrow Terminal 5 would be pretty damn deadly if it shattered, for example.
Cracked.com had an
article written by head of security at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel, where he laid out everything that's wrong with airport security in the US and almost certainly Britain as well. The glass is a particularly egregious design error for security.
The fact remains that trains are not targets in the same way as aircraft are. What would blowing up a Eurostar actually do? It's probably the least densely packed train on the network, running on brand new infrastructure where any blast forces would dissipate much more than on a tube or classic line. The trains themselves, even at the faster speed they go at, would be much less likely to derail due to the simplicity of the surrounding track infrastructure and their articulated design. The media wouldn't have the same immediate access to the carnage - it would happen far away from people on a viaduct, in a cutting or in a tunnel.
Tube and commuter trains are much more valuable targets, but even after 7/7 the network rebounded very quickly and London got back on its feet. It is impossible to screen every single passenger on our network due to its sheer size and interconnectedness. We aren't even able to fence off a lot of it from farm animals!
Since the Barcelona-Paris services have started on the continent the Spanish insistence on scanning passenger luggage has become utterly meaningless. You are scanned going from Spain to Paris but not the other way around, and when you arrive in Spain you are on the 'secure' side of the station without ever going through any form of ID check or security.
The threat of terrorism has been hyped up beyond belief in the Western world. The number of people killed is statistically insignificant and the security measures we have at airports have never once stopped an act taking place. Either terrorists get through them (or their plans would get through them - the airline plots) or they are stopped before they have even left their houses on their way to their target. The number of people who would ever carry out an atrocity in the UK is never going to be above single digits and they now tend to be rather incompetent and easy to detect.
I still feel that at St Pancras the designers knew that the need for security was complete tosh. Otherwise, why would they separate the unsecure and 'secure' areas with a glass divider only
two or so metres tall? Even without this I don't imagine that the station is truly kept separate for the hundreds of staff needed to keep it ticking, some of whom are likely agency workers without any security clearance whatsoever.
