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.

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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.

Full article: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mark-steel/mark-steel-thats-right-it-was-all-a-muslim-plot-2085575.html