National resilience: Duck and recover

national resilience, n a system designed for handling and recovering from the effects of a large-scale emergency such as a terror attack.

USAGE: "I believe we are making every effort to ensure not just that we strengthen national security but also that we strengthen national resilience," said Home Office minister Douglas Alexander on Monday, in response to criticism that the UK would be unable to cope with an al-Qaeda style strike.

TRANSLATION: rough equivalent of the Americans' "Homeland Security", a term which received official sanction in the US after the 11 September 2001 attacks, but which is spurned in UK security circles for being too emotive.

ORIGIN: "resilience" became the favoured synonym for emergency planning after the fuel protests in 2000 and the foot-and-mouth crisis in 2001. These led to a shake-up in responsibilities for such matters.

"UK Resilience" is the nom de plume of the Cabinet Office's new Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS), which coordinates the work of agencies in managing the aftermath of national emergencies.

In addition, national resilience incorporates individual responsibility for dealing with a major emergencies - ie: what we can all do to help recover from a terror attack. Measures include stocking up on tinned food and bottled water.

USEAGE II: terrorism is only one of several contingencies within the remit of "national resilience". Others include chemical accidents, train crashes, water shortages and flooding.

Although fear of a terror attack looms large at present, uppermost in the minds of those at the UK Resilience nerve centre this weekend was a more typically British concern: the weather. The agency issued a "severe weather" warning in advance of the gale force winds which hit over the weekend.