I think we are all getting used to the idea of not being allowed to take certain things into cricket grounds nowadays - but banning binoculars really is unbelievable. Presumably whoever wrote that particular line is not a cricket watcher.
What about this "high security" business, though? It seems to me that the world is a dangerous place, and we all know it and we have to deal with it. I personally resent anything which the authorities do which prevents or hinders me in making my own assessment of the risks of a particular course of action and then doing what I think is reasonably safe for me.
We are, IMO, hearing far too many comments from world leaders (Bush and Blair have both said them repeatedly in the last year) to the effect that the primary or paramount or over-riding duty of government is to ensure the safety of its citizens. I'd like to know: who asked them to do this and how long ago? If looking after my safety means:
- building concrete barriers around the Houses of Parliament;
- banning commercial flights by UK airlines to Kenya;
- building exclusion fences around the Washington Monument;
- requiring me to carry a national identity card at a cost of £300 and to provide 49 separate pieces of information to the government in connection with the national identity database, including my fingerprints;
- arming even 10% of the Metropolitan Police force;
- making it an offence to speak my mind in an organised manner anywhere within a kilometre of Westminster unless the Police Commissioner says I can;
- banging up anyone indefinitely without trial;
- making anyone subject to a "control order" in the UK which, to all intents and purposes, is the same as apartheid South Africa's banning orders;
- having my elected representatives apparently turn a blind eye to the US's scandalous "extraordinary renditions" and Guantanamo Bay;
- putting 3,000 security people in a cricket ground in Pakistan
- etc.
then thanks all the same: you get on with something else and I'll look after my own safety.