Britain’s secret intelligence service wants to set up a northern college. Blackburn has been mentioned as a possible location.
Spying, the second oldest profession in the world, is as relevant today as it ever was and new recruits are always very much sought after. But this is not a simple process. They must have at least a decade of work experience, so cannot join straight from school, college or university. There is a very long painstaking application form, which includes potentially embarrassing questions on both the application form and during the job interview.
Candidates will also have to go through a stringent vetting procedure. This can not only include yourself, but close family members too. Advice here is don’t put on Facebook that you’re applying for a job with British Intelligence. All previous convictions for misdemeanours must also be declared. Being the intelligence service, they will find anything on your record – or not declared – no matter how far back or so trivial, you don’t mention it.
Our town has been suggested as a venue for the spy academy due to its reputation for having an amiable local population. Blackburners are known for being friendly, some may say even nosy. This could make it a good place to test intelligence gathering skills. These would include dead letter drops, microdots, bugs and the use of invisible ink.
This spy academy, by its very nature, will wish to keep its location as secret as possible, like the MI6 building at Albert Embankment in London. One form of this secrecy will be the college having a ‘Man from U.N.C.L.E.’ style entrance to its premises. This is where a laundry acted as a front in this hit American spy TV series. It then led through secure corridors to a covert operations unit. Something similar was done in the British series ‘UFO’, were the spies came from outer space.
Hopefully any such facility in Blackburn could turn out to be a national asset and its administrators will learn from mistakes made in the past at similar facilities. On one such occasion a team of trainees were supposed to follow an alleged spy into a pub. This exercise went horribly wrong when the trainees paid for drinks and a meal. But by the time they sat down to their meal and drinks, their target upped and left the hostelry. They said: “Sod him” and got stuck into their food and drink instead and ended up having right a good knees up in the boozer. Nothing like that should be expected in Blackburn.
