Foreign Perspectives

Although MI6 was less than pleased (to put it mildly) when Bond zoomed right past their real-life headquarters on the opening sequence of “The World is Not Enough”, just a few years later and we find MI5, their internal security counterparts, advertising for spies on the Internet and indeed even MI6 now feature a nice photo of said headquarters on their own site. Of course, “we” have agents (or, rather, Mobile Surveillance Officers), it is “they” who have spies.

In days gone by, recruitment was by way of the old boy network. It was more than enough for X to say that you were a “reliable chap” for you to find yourself asked by someone in “the Service” to help your country. Unfortunately, the days when the British Empire was mainly up against the Soviet Union are long since gone and the threat is much more from the likes of Muslim extremists these days. The old boy network certainly never included ethnic minorities and, for that matter, rarely extended outside the public school network so they need to look for new ways to find people who can infiltrate the organisations posing the present-day threats.

The more paranoid of you will realise that this entry has so many trigger words that my ‘lil ‘ole blog is sure to attract the interest of MI5. Given the “request” by MI5 some years back to have their routers installed directly on the networks of all UK based ISPs, the paranoid amongst you are more than likely right this time. Sadly, I just can’t see MI5 appearing on the site stats somehow but hopefully I’ll keep one of the chaps or chappettes in ****** ***** or  **** amused now and again in the future.

I, of course, have shot myself down re applying by way of this post as I’m fairly sure that posting such discussions fall well outside of the guidelines they quote, namely “Discretion is important to the Service, so please only discuss this application with your partner and/or immediate family.”. Although, for the true conspiracy theorists, I could be an MI5 plant and double-bluffing the lot of you!

Seriously though, if you’re British and have lived in the UK for most of your life, it is one of the ways that you could help to defend the British way of life in a very constructive, if usually unseen way.