Slashdot Mirror
Geocaching Shuts Down British Town
DaveAtWorkAnnoyingly writes "Many geocachers will be thinking twice when planting their treasure in an urban space as one geocacher found out in England after the police cordoned off the center of a small West Yorkshire town and the Bomb Squad was called in. From the article: 'It was a normal busy Friday morning in the small West Yorkshire market town of Wetherby when someone working in a café spotted a man acting a bit suspiciously on the street. He appeared to have a small plastic box in his hand and after fiddling with the container he bent down and hid it under a flower box standing on the pavement. He then walked off, talking to somebody on his phone.'"
No, seriously. We've not had any serious viable terrorist threats in this country since the heady days of the IRAs mainland bombing campaigns, except for maybe the white supremacist cell (with BNP councillor involvement) discovered with explosives/arms cache in Lancashire a few years ago. Calling in the bomb squad was completely OTT
That the govt and media have managed to whip people into that level of fear is a damning indictment of the amount of common sense in the UK these days.
The shopkeeper who called in the bomb squad even tried to blame the geocacher for the bomb squad being there all afternoon and her losing all that trade. Maybe she should just admit she's an idiot and caused her own losses (and also caused all the other shopkeepers to lose trade too!) by calling them in.