If you’ve been unlucky enough to have to get on a plane in the past couple of years, especially across the Atlantic, then you’ll no doubt have been irritated by the ridiculous pantomime of the airport security checks that you are required to endure just so the stupid people feel a bit safer. The limited liquid rule is particularly irritating, based, as it is, on a bizarre knee-jerk reaction to a very dubious threat.
There’s an old joke that involves asking someone why they’re performing a bizarre ritual, such as constantly throwing confetti out of a car window.
“It’s to keep the crocodiles away” the person explains.
“But you don’t get crocodiles around here,” you point out.
“See it works well doesn’t it!”
Now this is not just a crap joke, it also seems to be what the UK government are basing their airport security policy upon.
According to an article in El Reg Baron Bassam of Brighton, the government’s lordly gobshite on the matter, explained the need for the 100ml restriction of all liquids and gels thus:
The fact that there has not been a serious incident involving liquid explosives indicates, I would have thought, that the measures that we have put in place so far have been very effective.
So, not only has this measure prevented terrorists creating liquid explosives in airplane khazis, but it seems to have also put off the crocodiles as well!
