Tuesday, May 01, 2007
The customer isn't always right
It's the little details of major trials that interest me. When the 21/7 "bombers" were gathering their ingredients they were combing every hair and beauty outlet in my area of London for enough peroxide to turn everyone in the London Borough of Barnet blond(e). A factory in Scotland had to start a special production line. None of the people behind the counter thought to call the police. One of the plotters who were sentenced yesterday turned up at an agricultural supplies centre in a customised Audi with rap playing and ordered enough fertiliser to cover five football pitches, claiming it was for his allotment. "What are you doing? Making a bomb?" said the guy behind the counter – and then sold him it. Luckily the people at the storage warehouse wondered why anyone would be spending £207 a month to store £90-worth of fertiliser (or, indeed, at all) and called the police.
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More boring insights into the day job, but my wife works in the chemical industry and these examples really annoyed her. The guys behind the counter really should have called the police. All Chemical suppliers have a legal obligation to contact the police if they are selling things that can be used for bombs (or drugs) to people who cannot prove that they are not dodgy - i.e. assume they ARE terrorists, not that they are not.
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