On my way back from Bucharest to Moscow I had to transit through Munich. Since it was a short trip, I was travelling with hand-carried luggage only. In my washing kit I had a bottle of moisturiser. (After 25 years of running around in the open, the first seven in a semi-permanent haze of diesel smoke, if I don’t moisturise regularly I turn into a remarkably good stand-in for the amazing Lizard Man.)
So, the female monkey at Munich Airport security confiscated my moisturiser. OK, it was my own fault, I am a (very) frequent traveller and usually organised so that I pass through security with the minimum of hassle. The only metal on my body is in my teeth, even my watch and belt buckle are plastic. So, fair’s fair, I broke the rules. The rules, however, are stupid, as any sensible person has probably guessed by now. You all know that this is my game and, should you wish to smuggle weapons or explosives onto an aeroplane, give me a bell and I’ll tell you exactly how you can do it, with much less hassle than you get going through airport security.
What this all means, of course, is that the terrorists are winning the game hands down. So little is necessary to terrorise the wimps of the West. A free-lance whacko hides a bomb of sorts in his shoe and the powers that be go into hysterical overreaction and long queues of passengers line up like sheep to remove their shoes in front of some minimum wage monkey who wouldn’t recognise a terrorist if he turned up with a knife between his teeth and an AK over his shoulder. Another dipstick high on superstition smuggles liquid explosive onto an aeroplane so the bureaucrats decree that Bravo22C’s moisturiser must be confiscated. Yes, we are afraid of Nivea. Then another nutter decides to hide some explosive in his skiddies, so, ladies, you will now be subjected to aforesaid monkeys leering over your curves as you pass through the pantie-scanners.
The initiative lies with the terrorist. Find some gullible jerk, brainwash him into blowing himself to bits for the glory of allah, set him off on some improbable course of action and watch the brainless Westerners put their own through all the unneccessary contortions you can imagine because the effective course of action would be discriminatory and would infringe the yooman rights of the people it should be aimed at.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Hiya, Bravo. A good and justified rant. Stag on!
🙂
OZ
Oh I’m so glad you revealed your true self to us!
Moisturiser? Pah! They nicked by home made raspberry jam for the boy in Vancouver a few years ago, bloody pervert Canadians, fetishists all!
My daughter had some plastic hair ornaments confiscated at Adelaide airport some time ago. I’m waiting for someone to decide that my metal propelling pencil is a lethal weapon, it is a great deal more dangerous than those ornaments …
I was presented with a kundu drum several years ago in Papua New Guinea. On my return to Brisbane the skin, which came from a long defunct monitor lizard, was confiscated by Aussie immigration officials. It rendered the drum useless and did nothing for said defunct monitor lizard. When we came back to Blighty, I had the drum recovered with a piece of goat skin and it now stands in the lounge of The Cave alongside the didgeree doesn’t.
OZ
Boa, you are right. There are several ways to kill someone with a Biro…
…or even a matchbox!
Fruit can be pretty dangerous, you know.
There is a chat room for commercial pilots that I once visited. You should hear the complaints they make about security. Some of them made the very valid argument that seeing as they are flying the sodding plane, if they were suicidal maniacs it really should not make blind bit of difference if they carry a bottle of shampoo or not.
Sipu, I rest my case – or my carry-on.
My Grannie got stopped once at Croydon Airport in 1932 as she tried to board a flight to Paris. She was carrying a five gallon drum of petrol to take to my Grandad who had run out in the Champs Elysees, PC barstewards!!!
I once took a full canteen of cutlery in my hand luggage from England to Oz… no one even questioned me.
I have just had to lash out on some new luggage, I went for Antler. All the locks on the new cases were TSA Accepted Key Padlocks for the USA. The blurb on the locks say that The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners and airline check-in staff at airports in the USA are trained to recognize the Travel Safety logo. They understand that the luggage displaying the mark are permitted to remain locked as the TSA screeners have special tools to open them if there is a need to inspect the cases.
Not having travelled to the USA since all this security started, I would guess that anyone not having this sort of lock is at risk of having their locks/cases destroyed? I’m off to Spain tomorrow and what with all this added security I wonder if it is worth it. All of these security measures seemed designed to line the pockets of others at the expense of the traveller!
I really really tried to resist asking this question but I can’t resist it…..so how do you kill someone with a matchbox?
With difficulty? 😉
I had my table tennis bat confiscated. It had some very nice rubbers. I would never have ruined those by smacking someone with it.
Val, without getting into too much detail, if you hold an old fashioned matchbox in your fist so that one corner is exposed you have a chisel edge …doesn’t work with cardboard marchboxes, though.
It’s Jan. 😀 I thought all matchboxes were cardboard. England’s Glory used to come from Gloucester and I never thought of them as killing machines.
I suppose if you have a “chisel edge” of anything it can be jabbed into the carotid artery. Car keys probably effective too.
Oh Jan,
So little imagination.
You use the box of matches to light the stick of dynamite you inserted up their nether regions. 🙂
Ah, Jan, too young to remember when matchboxes were made out of thin boxwood.
😀 seems I must be, Bravo!
So you can’t kill anyone with cardboard, except with a lighted spill and Ferret’s method? Damn. I so liked the thought of a lethal matchbox.
How about a spatula? I can’t imagine the SAS go armed with them. It’d be Delia Smith’s weapon of choice. I remember seeing a v funny short film about a man being killed with a spoon. Sorry. Gorn off at tangent.
Oh I was almost on my knees at John Lennon airport when they were threatening to confiscate the Clinique. I was in full on weepie mode, so the security man let me have it back.
Then my kids squeezed the entire contents down the loo a couple of weeks later!