“Don’t wake up or Father Christmas won’t come and leave any presents”, so I was told.

That was until I saw my mother creeping in one night with the stockings to put at the bottom of the bed, causing me to get up, wake up my sister and by 4 o’clock in the morning we were in our parents’ bedroom ‘having fun’ – although I never did let on that I knew about Father Christmas – just in case the presents stopped!

Don’t do that or the bogey-man will get you.  The fairy tales which were, in reality, scary tales – giving both a moral and a warning about the bad things that existed in this world to make sure that you were ‘good’.

But, of course, when you grow up, there is no need of these stories for you are adult and don’t need to be kept ‘good’ – that you do all by yourself.

Well, almost.  One wonders if the fairy stories for adults; aren’t manufactured for exactly that purpose.  Keeping us ‘good’.  Making sure we ‘toe the line’. As is pointed out in the article, to tell us that there is a ‘severe threat’ means nothing if you don’t then advise what we are supposed to be doing about it – otherwise, over time, people just ignore it. And, after all, if after some time of a ‘severe threat’ nothing actually happens, aren’t we quite right to become complacent?

As one of the comments points out (maybe a little cynically), perhaps it’s all just a wheeze to stop us thinking about the ‘economic crisis’ or, perhaps, it’s the work of what is now big business – i.e. the security industry.

And then I go back to airport security. Travelling through different countries (but within the EU) as I have done, it is quite remarkable that, for some countries some things are fine whilst for others they are absolutely prohibited.

And, I’m sorry, but I refuse to look at every brown skinned person as if they were a potential bomber. The guys who sell flowers at the stall outside my house, for example, who say ‘Ciao, capo’ to me every morning deserve a smile not a look of suspicion or, worse, hatred!

I’m with the author of the article and think that it is, in the main, all made up. I suspect I’m more likely to die in a car accident or through some health issue than be blown up by terrorists and I suspect that you are too – whatever the level of alert at the time.

Still, fairy stories have their uses.