“Next, we will empty the Infidels’ garbage bins. Muahaha!”

Ah, if only all critiques of War on Terror paranoia were so much fun to read.

Mark Steel: That’s right, it was all a Muslim plot – Mark Steel, Commentators – The Independent

You might think that a plot to blow up the Pope would be news for a while. Popes don’t get blown up all that often, and this one’s enough of a celebrity that if he fell over drunk at the MTV awards with Kanye West it would be in the papers for a few days, so it’s strange that a plot to blow him up was only of interest for one day.

On Saturday, the front-page headline in the Express was “Muslim plot to blow up Pope”, and every paper had a similar headline. So it seemed there’d be a massive search and meticulous security, with even the Pope himself getting frisked and being told: “Sorry, your Holiness, you’re only allowed to carry 100mls of holy water on to the pulpit, though you can get another bottle after you’ve been through security.”

But nothing more has been heard of it. Yet at the time it was so serious that, according to The Sun, the plotters, who were six London street cleaners, “had access to where the Pope is going to be”. Because through the trick of becoming street cleaners, the conniving terrorists would be able to gain entry into the secret area of London known as “the streets”.

The Telegraph elaborated on this, informing us: “As street cleaners they would have been able to move relatively freely through the crowds.” Unlike the crowds themselves, of course, who wouldn’t have been allowed to move at all but would all have been nailed to the pavement. And you can move much more relatively freely through a crowd when you’re pushing a huge portable dustbin with giant brushes, so they were clearly a terrifying menace.

Luckily it’s unlikely that being a street cleaner would have been enough to get all that close to the Pope, unless they were hoping to shout: “Hang on, Pontiff, you can’t start Communion yet, there’s a crisp packet under your cassock, I’ll come and brush it away for you – KABOOM!”

So what happened to the plot? The most likely answer is obviously that its sudden disappearance was due to a miracle. But sceptics might suggest another explanation.

The Express told us: “The suspected plot was smashed.” Other papers agreed it had been “foiled”. But after the anti-terrorist squad raided the cleaning depot and arrested the six men, it turned out the only evidence against them was that someone had overheard them talking about the Pope, and they were released without charge. So the plot was smashed and foiled through the tactic of never having existed in the first place.

[…]

So there was no plot; nothing, just a mix-up between the activities “talking about” and “planning to blow up”.  [MORE]