There was a cordon around the local Garda (police) Station when I ventured down to the village this afternoon, it’s about 500 metres from the house. Someone told me it was a bomb alert. Just read up on it there when I got home. It seems someone pulled up in a car at the station and told the police there was a device strapped to it. Bomb disposal people came out and did a controlled explosion but turned out it was an explosive device, thankfully!
So your terrorism campaign is going well, then? 
:smack: *wasn’t *
I was surprised to learn that there was a gunman scare in a nearby shopping mall yesterday. They evacuated the mall and surrounded it. It turned out to be a guy with an oddly-shaped umbrella that people mistook for a gun.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/2011_0419headlinegoes/format=comments&position=0
I was driving home from work when I heard about it on the radio, and actually did a sort of double take:
“Hang on, I thought I left Belfast…”
Check out the tale of Harry Stanley.
You’re concerned about wasting the tax payers money on hoax calls?
The scares up North have been far enough away so far this year, the biggest closure of roads near to me was for the poor sod of a cyclist run over by a lorry on the Ormeau Road.
Years ago I worked at a local community college where there were about 20 phoned in bomb threats over the course of a few weeks, sometimes 2 or 3 in a day.
At first, every fuckin’ single time they evacuated the building and search for the bomb. The administration claimed that the law mandated the evacuations/searches. They were real sorry it disrupted everyone’s day, but their hands were tied and they had no other options.
After the 15th threat, the law must have changed, since they stopped evacuating.
Check out the tale of James Kaboom: