A riot of my own

Libya. Land of the Colonel. Soon to be my home for the next couple of days.

I'm sitting in the Lufthansa lounge at Frankfurt Airport, waiting for my flight to Tripoli, capital of Libya, and showpiece of an African dictator that makes the majority of other uniform-wearing, crazy hat-wearing meglomaniacs look positively sane and balanced. That's not to say that Colonel Gaddafi does not get it right on some occasions - it is just that those occasions in which he does succeed in making a valid point have more to do with the laws of probability than with any insight on his part.

This morning I departed one state - the United Kingdom - that, whilst ostensibly democratic, has become a surveillance state. Cameras dominate the landscape, pointing down from every vantage point, recording the minutae of life. All in the name of security and safety. Yet, as the suicide bombings on the Moscow subway system have made accutely plain, no amount of video footage makes a difference. Just as it made no difference one day in July a few years ago in the British capital.

And so I sit here, in the Lufthansa lounge, weissbier standing alongside my laptop, knowing that I am being filmed. From somewhere. I cannot see the camera, but I'm at an airport, so there must be a camera watching me. I just cannot see it. Or does having access to the business lounge of Germany's largest carrier remove one from the scrutiny of the all-seeing eyes?

Either way, I bet that there aren't many cameras in Tripoli. I may be about to travel to a country in which I will understand very little, have about as much comprehension of daily life as I will its language, but I will not be filmed in most locations. And will, inevitably, most likely be a lot safer than I ever was in London during the last few days.

This isn't to say that I felt particularly unsafe in London - being a 6'2" skinhead probably means that I am not an obvious candidate for a mugging or stabbing - both of which apparently occur with fantastically high frequency, if the free daily paper is to be believed. A teenager was chased and stabbed to death at Victoria Station last week, I have read. And nobody prevented it from occurring. Not even the surveillance cameras. But fear not, British population, the perpetrators were caught on CCTV and some of them have now been arrested. Including at least one teenage girl. Look how the world has deteriorated - even teenage girls, dressed in school uniforms, are involved in the bullying and murder of an immigrant teenager.

None of this means that the North African dictator, head of state of my intended destination, has got it right either. But on the other hand, has he got it so completely wrong? I don't know. Maybe I will by the end of Thursday.

And that message circles in my mind. White riot, I wanna riot. White riot, a riot of my own.