Toys and terrorists

It's the middle of August and there's almost no political news, especially not of the EU variety, given the whole of Brussels is on a (well deserved?) five-week holiday.

But if you look hard enough there's always something worth writing about. Henrik Alexandersson, prominent Swedish blogger and Pirate Party employee, for instance, has found that the EU Directorate General for Justice, Freedom and Security is proposing a ban on the fuel used for children’s toy steam engines in an effort to prevent terrorism.

The EU fears that a terrorist could buy tens of thousands of fuel tablets and then extract a sufficient amount of an explosive substance out of them to make a bomb. As Henrik says, quite why anyone would go to the trouble of using tens of thousands of fuel tablets, since it would surely be far easier to build a bomb from staple goods such as ammonia and formalin, we're not sure. But he says a ban would effectively be the end for the German manufactured steam engines, as no substitute fuel exists. Will the Germans resist?