Reply #130: The UK isn't the US.

[Spider Jerusalem]

It's kind of ridiculous to say 'the party in power has abused the threat level system', etc., when the UK didn't even HAVE a threat level system until recently, and the UK has ALSO experienced fairly recent terrorist-related activity (Tube bombings of July 2005).

Blair may be a disgusting lickspittle who toadies Bush relentlessly, but the Labour government in the UK haven't been given to using paranoia as a political tool, for the most part. Attempting to make direct comparisons of the actions of the US government and the US Department of Homeland Security under the Bush administration to what's happening in the UK (which is, I remind you, much more accessible from the Middle East...it's about the same distance from Baghdad to London as from New York to Los Angeles) is, quite frankly, blatantly ignorant and ridiculously paranoid.