And Tomorrow: Pope revealed as Catholic!

[major_clanger]

Today's nomination for "You Don't Say!" silly story: the Guardian reports that 38 BAE Systems staff have MOD passes.

I am shocked, shocked. Our biggest defence contractor, pre-eminent provider of weapon systems to the UK forces and supplier of numerous ongoing support contracts, actually has a number of staff who regularly visit the Ministry of Defence! It's appalling; clearly, in future, we should only meet with contractor staff over a pint in the Silver Cross or the Lord Moon of the Mall. (Cough) Like I used to.

But really...! If I'd been asked to guess the number of BAE employees with Main Building passes I would have guessed a hundred or more; 38 sounds far lower than I would have expected.

Comments

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

have you used that icon before or is it the first time?

Would you have been allowed to post such a story before? or would it be ok if all you did was point to a third party (the Guardian) and what they said.

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

Has anybody tried asking how many passes have been issued to individuals working for companies subcontracted by BAE? Not that I'd ever suggest a government body might give a technically correct but nevertheless slightly misleading answer to anything.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

I have indeed been making some new icons.

As for posting this sort of thing... I would probably have f-locked it before.

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

I was struck by the sentence,

"Mr Lamb

(Lib Dem MP)

criticised the MoD for handing out passes to BAE staff, allowing them to wander freely around sensitive areas in the ministry"

. What on Earth makes him think that once through the door people would be allowed to wander freely? Even in my own office of a large IT company, I can only get into about 25% of it (either I've put on weight or the air vents are too small to crawl through), and a far smaller fraction of the higher security areas, and that is lot more than the majority of people in the building can do.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

He is indeed talking rubbish. The MOD operates zoned security, so there are various areas where even a regular-visitor unescorted access pass will not get you. Also, anyone who does get a pass will have been cleared to a reasonably high level - probably as high as most military personnel or civil servants working permanently at the MOD.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

What are the security levels at MOD main building? (Or is that one of those questions which can't be asked?)

I know when I had guys working at BAE Systems sites they were all PS1 at an absolute minimum, some had to be higher than that depending on what "toys" they were designing.

BAE staff will almost all have at least Positive Security vetting just to have their jobs in the first place, so this shouldn't shock anybody.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

And it could matter a lot what the BAE staff do. Somebody on the slaes side is a different beast to somebody doing product support on $_BFG2000.