When is a security wall not a security wall? When the designers of it make a very British cock up

The Calais security barrier that has unlocked doors set within it

 

I love my country Britain, it’s people and its history. I love my monarch and the military that serve her and I’m enormously proud of what my country has given the world. If you are reading this on a computer screen then you are doing so because of the theoretical and practical work carried out by British scientists and engineers. But, I have to admit that when Britain makes a cock up it can sometimes be a spectacularly stupid cock up.

I was astounded to read a recent article in the UK Daily Express newspaper (h/t ROP) that the much heralded and sorely needed British-built security barrier to defend against migrant invaders at the French port of Calais, was built with unlocked doors along its length. I can’t believe the utter stupidity of this design. All that is happening is one invader is going around the wall, sprinting up to the door and opening it for the rest of the invaders. I’ve seen some engineering cock ups in my time but I’ve rarely seen anything so gormless as building a security wall and leaving unlocked doors along its length.

Of course I understand that French police and officials need to be able to cross the wall at times but surely the sensible option would have been to install locks on the doors and give the French authorities either physical or electronic keys to them? The solution to the need for French officials to go through the wall should not be leaving an unlocked door in it.

The Daily Express said:

The 13ft barrier, dubbed The Great Wall of Calais, was built using £2.3million of UK taxpayers’ money.

It runs for well over half a mile beside the N216 motorway, which ends at the town’s ferry port terminal.

But a probe has found that steel doors set into it as access points for French officials are a glaring weak point.

On the side of the wall facing away from the road the doors look like featureless sheets of plain metal.

But on the traffic side they have handles with simple catches which can be opened without a key.

Migrants have discovered that all they have to do is gather at a door and send one of their mates running to the end of the wall.

He skirts round it, hares back to the door and opens it to let them all pour through to the road where they can jump on trucks – the very thing the wall was designed to prevent.

The embarrassing security lapse is said to be an open secret among Calais’ community of migrants desperately trying to get to Britain illegally.

I can’t believe that this problem was not noticed in the design stage or indeed at any stage up to and including construction, its a total balls up. There would have been numerous times when this mistake could have been picked up. Why didn’t someone in the initial planning stages or in the drawing office or at any point during construction notice this glaring failure in a wall intended to keep people out of the port area?

I find it astounding that highly trained and presumably specialist designers and installers of a project costing millions of pounds of public money didn’t at any point thing ‘we have a problem here, there are no locks’.

This is a monstrously stupid mistake for a government to make on such a costly and vital project and this mistake needs to be rectified immediately. This is because as every day passes that these doors are unlocked it increases the number of criminals and jihadis coming into Britain via Calais. Lock these doors and lock then now.

1 Comment on "When is a security wall not a security wall? When the designers of it make a very British cock up"

  1. Philip Copson | December 14, 2017 at 8:56 am |

    On a lighter note, but encapsulating the same unbelievable level of naivety, I read a story (or possibly a shaggy-dog story) about a council up North who, in the days of the Cold War, had built for themselves a nuclear fall-out shelter for council officials to shelter from the deadly radiation in the event that Krushchev decided that the sure way to bring Britain to it’s knees was to nuke Newcastle or irradiate Ilkley Moor – (presumably this was a vanity project; if the Ruskies had nuked the place, it could have weeks before anyone noticed….?).
    Anyway, the thing was built apparently, complete with it’s food supplies, decontamination unit, filtered-air etc etc, so that the Chairman of Bradford City Tramways and Fine Arts Committee and his minions could shelter living safely on bread-and-dripping until such time the world needed their services once more.
    Trouble was – it had an outside toilet………

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