A nice essay on security trade-offs:

The mismatch between the resources devoted to fighting organised crime compared with those directed towards counter-terrorism is unnerving. Government says that there are millions of pounds in police budgets that should be devoted to dealing with organised crime. In truth, only a handful of British police forces know how to tackle it. The ridiculous Victorian patchwork of shire constabularies means that most are too small to tackle serious criminality that doesn't recognise country, never mind county, borders.

The Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) was launched two years ago as Britain's equivalent of the FBI, with the remit of taking on the Mr Bigs of international crime. But ministers have trimmed Soca's budget this year. Far from expanding to counter the ever-growing threat, the agency is shrinking and there is smouldering unhappiness in the ranks. Soca's budget for taking the fight to the cartels and syndicates is £400 million -- exactly the same amount that the Government intends to spend overseas in countries such as Pakistan on workshops and seminars to counter al-Qaeda's ideology.