More A Way Of Life… Look, this is just between you and me

Terror At 0 Feet!

Today is the first time I’ve departed through a UK airport since the latest round of security measures was rolled out a couple of weeks ago, and oh my dear.

To begin with, there’s something a bit scruff-inducing about these new measures. Not in the passengers or staff, but in the central security search of (in this case) Heathrow Terminal Three. It’s as if in their worry over whether a particular item will be allowed through, people have started randomly discarding them as they get nearer and nearer to the scanning arch. Littered along the way I noted among other stuff;
A floppy disk
A not quite empty pack of TicTacs
A tube of toothpaste
A scrunchie
A toothbrush (right at the other end of the area from the toothpaste)
A single playing card (three of hearts), and
Three boxes of matches

Along with odd bits of paper and sundry other items that might fall under the usual heading of ‘litter’.

But why? The instructions as to what can and can’t be taken on board are pretty straightforward, and should not offer too much worry over any of the above except the matches.

And also; why haven’t they been cleaned up?

Behind the bag x-ray machine there was also a tray of what I will presume to be The Confiscated. Here were sad-looking roll on deodorants, Innocent smoothies and an errant tube of hair gel. So apparently the instructions aren’t that clear after all, even though accompanied by a constant loop video, shot in the best arthouse black and white style, graphically showing how to, for instance, take one’s coat off.

Once coats are taken off, by the way, they’re put, with bags, belts, shoes and laptops, into plastic trays which are then rolled along a platform towards the scanners. But the bags (which *must* be placed in a tray for this little roll) are then taken out of the trays and put through separately. What’s that all about????

And offering still more evidence of how I’m clearly in the minority in thinking that it should be pretty straightforward, the family of three in front of me had four bags between them, and all four of them were pulled out for hand searching by the security staff because they had banned items in them.

But wait, you exclaim, is this Jon simply accepting this new stricture on his ability to take his asthma inhaler on to a plane with him? Where is the bile? Where is the cry of protest at this bonkers knee-jerk reaction to an alleged plot that by any measure seems far-fetched if not scientifically impossible? (Those doubting this last claim should motor over to The Register’s critique of the mechanism by which one could create an airliner-destroying combined liquid explosive (first brought to my attention via Lyle’s link to it) ).

Oh look. Here it is: What a load of bollocks this all is. I’m not one who is surgically wedded to my hair gel, nor my moisturiser, so I have no personal grief to vent. I don’t particularly mind that I have to buy my bottle of water for the flight in the Departure Lounge rather than at my local supermarket, because I never did anyway (though since I can no longer buy a bottle of water for a flight to the US, the airlines had better be damn generous with their water distribution). And as I’m not one of those business travellers who has always demanded the right to carry a small suitcase, a briefcase and a laptop bag with me on shorthaul flights, I’m not suffering any great loss of privilege.

But I am grievously suffering a sense of humour failure that this nonsense is happening at all, because, simply put, I don’t buy it. I don’t buy that the threat, which I accept is real (or rather, I accept that there are a few people in the world who might want to down a plane deliberately, but I’ve accepted that for as long as I’ve been aware of air travel) is removed or even diminished by these procedures, because I think they're wrongly directed. I don’t buy that the capability to mix and detonate a sufficient quantity of triacetone triperoxide to blow me out of the sky exists (see that article in The Register again). I don’t buy, therefore, that confiscating hair gel or humiliating mothers by making them taste baby milk in front of total strangers is a remotely effective way of protecting me and the couple of hundred other people on this plane. What this does is cause the maximum possible disruption to the greatest possible number of people (and even though I’m not suffering the loss of my toiletries I’m still disrupted by having to leave extra time for getting through the airport, and standing in security check line), and so ‘They’ win. Because as far as I’m concerned, it's giving 'Them' a victory to make a lot of people’s individual days a little bit less tolerable by having the little things that we take for granted in our lives taken away from us.

David's reaction is more extreme still, and he says he won't fly while these regulations are in effect, because he refuses to be treated like it's assumed he's a criminal. So no exciting weekend away for my birthday for me.

Re the inhaler, by the way: Yes, that’s right, I couldn’t bring it on board with me. Before it's forced through the nozzle as a cloud of teeny droplets it’s a liquid you see. And because the inhaler itself doesn’t have my name on it on a pharmacist’s label (they put those on the box so as not to break the seal, ironically), I can’t prove it was prescribed for me. I should stress that I’ve got another one in my checked baggage – I never do a trip without at least two.

Better hope I don’t have a fatal asthma attack on the plane though, really. And that my bag isn’t lost en route. After all, the stress of dealing with that might trigger an asthma attack...