The press shouldn’t join the government in its mindless obsession with security

A favourite newspaper ruse is to sneak a journalist on to the flight deck of a Boeing 747 and then to suggest that we are all at risk as a result of lax security. It is, of course, very effective. Most of us are easily alarmed. And many of us will have been persuaded by the media that the admission of the ‘comic terrorist’ Aaron Barschak into Prince William’s birthday party at Windsor Castle was a terrifying lapse.