A BBC photographer has been stopped from taking pictures of St Paul’s Cathedral by the police. The PC did this because there was a risk that the photographer could have been an al Qaeda operative planning on blowing the building up. You can see the BBC news clip here.
I doubt very much that the PC did this off her own back. She was probably told to look out for photographers. Somebody in a more senior position must have ordered her to do this after a risk assessment. The fact that you can see Saint Pauls on Google Street View is neither here nor there.
The problem is we do a lot of really stupid things in the name of risk reduction, and they cost us a lot of time and money. Getting things signed in triplicate, changing passwords monthly, filing documents for years and years and my personal favourite, not telling people stuff because they don’t need to know. Presumably they do, otherwise they wouldn’t have asked.
So next time you find yourself saying “I can’t do that”, ask yourself “just how bad could it be?”
Photo by Greg Jeanneau on Unsplash
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