On the road again
I am…
- In Copenhagen.
- Tired.
- Hung over.
- Full of cold.
- In need of doing some laundry. Have been wandering around the area for half an hour in search of a launderette which I’m sure wasn’t where the hotel receptionist told me it was. Maybe I was just too tired, hung over and full of cold to comprehend.
I’m on tour with ABBA - The Show again, and while it’s nice to be properly working (i.e. playing the horn for a living), it’s a long one (nearly a month) with a lot of long coach journeys and not much free time. Today is our first real “day off” - we have a show tonight but are free until 3pm, and most of our actual day off yesterday was spent on a coach from Oslo. So I really ought to be outside enjoying the sights and sounds of wonderful Copenhagen but instead I’m sat in the hotel foyer with the laptop and a cocktail of cold remedies.
I promised a post on musicians and airline security, and since this is the first time I’ve flown anywhere since the incidents in August this would be a good place for it. It’s nice to see common sense has prevailed and specific provisions have been made for musicians in the Department for Transport’s regulations on aviation security, meaning that musical instruments of any (reasonable) size are now allowed in the cabin as a second piece of hand luggage (apart from cellos and such which need to be bought a ticket). Less pleasurable is the process of getting through security - in the past you could arrive 2 hours before departure and still have time for a leisurely beer or two and a browse through duty free. Not any more.
I can live with that though. What struck me most about recent discussions on the issue was the extent to which people seemed to accept August’s security crackdown without objection. The discussion on the BBC website featured contributions from notable musicians such as Steven Isserlis, but also elicited reactions such as Matthew from Newcastle’s “Let me remind them (musicians) that we are still in a ‘critical’ state of alert in this country, and if these inconveniences save lives, then they should learn to put up with it” and the ever-so-helpful Laura from Middlesex: “Get real, there is more to life than music”.
Apart from the obvious point that we cannot afford to simply “put up with” what is effectively a bar to working and earning money (if the stricter controls were still in place now I’m quite sure this tour would have been cancelled and I’d have lost about £2,500) there is a broader point. I’m quite sure that at some point in the future there will be a similar terrorist alert. Maybe then the security measures will be tightened again, and maybe then they will not be relaxed afterwards. Do we accept this as necessary to control terrorists, or do we question that which we are told by our government is necessary? Why is it necessary? Will it really make a difference?
Was the country on a critical state of alert before the 7/7 bombings in London? I don’t remember that it was, I would like to think we would have been warned. Can acts of terrorism really be accurately predicted? I doubt it.
While the main goal of the terrorist may be to kill on a mass scale, the secondary and more pernicious aim is to disrupt peoples’ daily lives and work. Every time a restriction is placed upon how we live and work in the name of anti-terrorism, this is a small victory for the terrorist. Yes, of course these measures are sometimes necessary, but there needs to be a constant dialogue between the people imposing these measures and the people whom they affect.
So, Matthews and Lauras of this world, I have no qualms about questioning actions taken for our own security. In a democracy we should do this, otherwise our own control over our lives is taken away. Government by fear is just as insidious a threat as terrorism and engaging in debate on these issues is a responsible course of action to protect our civil liberties as well as our security.
