MI5 Intelligence

Track of the day Back in the USSR - Baba Yaga.

"I retain complete confidence in Sir Ian Blair as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and, more than that, I retain complete confidence in our police and our security services in tackling the terrorist threat that we face.
And in my view, if I can say this in relation to what happened in Forest Gate, if our police were not acting on such information, then we would have the right to complain."

Tony Blair's words not mine and he's an expert on intelligence. Mind you it's interesting that he used the word 'information' rather than 'intelligence'. I used to wonder where those clever intelligence people got their information from and now, thanks to Google, I know. They get it from people like me.

I know this because MI5 have a website that explains all about what they do. There's even a please help us page so here goes.

Dear MI5,
I'd like the man at number 18 investigated please because he looks very shifty to me. He's got a big white van and disappears for days on end. He could be bringing anyone or anything into the country. He parks the van right on the bend in our road and I don't like that at all. He definitely needs investigating.

Luckily there's a box on the MI5 'please help us page' where I can type in all my concerns and send them off. I can even do it anonymously if I want to, which is just as well because some of my information might be based on local gossip and I certainly wouldn't want to get a visit from the man at number 18.

While I'm at it I think I'll tell them about the guy who runs the chemist shop round the corner. He's of foreign extraction and wears a wig. In my book anyone who knows about chemicals and wears a wig is definitely dodgy.

I'm also going to report the guy who runs the Hole In The Ground bar because I'm fed up reporting him to the pub group. They never do anything and he's trying to poison everyone who goes in there. A word from MI5 to the local police would put an end to his little game.

There would also be the bonus of having 250 police with guns on the streets of Bogsville and a local air exclusion zone would be good because I'm very worried about all those people flushing the toilets in jumbo jets while I'm sitting out in the garden.

If you can think of anything that's threatening your national security go to the MI5 page and drop them a line, unless you vote BNP of course and see the page as a way of causing problems for people you don't like. MI5 don't want those sorts of messages.

Mind you, MI5 do have their limitations because they point out that if your information relates to an imminent threat to life or property, you should contact the police on 999 or the police Anti-terrorist Hotline on 0800 789 321. Evidence of dodgy intelligence there I'm afraid - the last time I dialled 999 I ended up talking to someone on a switchboard two hundred miles away who had never even heard of Bogsville.