The hysteria following the bogus airline terror plot (for which there is no plausible evidence, and for which charges will be quietly dropped in a few years' time, just as with the "ricin plot" of 2003) has caused a mass of overreaction among airlines and airports. From the confiscation of books at boarding time, to the banning of toiletries, to the insistence that passenger bags must be clear plastic (why not insist that passenger clothes must be clear plastic? Safer and kinkier!), to the evacuation of airports, to planes turning back in mid-flight, to the cancellations and mega-delays all over the UK, all I can say is: thank god I've left the British Empire. This kind of stuff makes me even less eager to return.
Events seemed to reach a low on Sunday, when passengers refused to board a flight from Malaga to Manchester unless two "Asian" gentlemen, who were doing highly suspicious things like speaking a foreign language and checking their watches (what kind of evil bastards check the time on an aeroplane?), were removed. It has taken a while, but it seems the atmosphere of paranoia whipped up by government and media has finally made racism mainstream again. At last the BBC can show those Love Thy Neighbour repeats. (Though having recently seen the lardheads who fly from Malaga to Manchester, it doesn't surprise me that they've entirely succumbed to the paranoia. Perhaps some of them even welcomed the new travel restrictions. After all, for the first time in their lives, they had an excuse not to bring suncream.)
Arguably worse again was the flight from London to Washington a week before, which was diverted -- escorted by fighter planes -- to Boston, where the passengers were then interrogated for three hours, with their baggage laid out and inspected by dogs, and all because some 59-year-old ex-hippy had a fit. (A pissy fit, so I've read, but still a fit.) This was all reported by the media uncritically, treated as a necessary consequence of an age of terror, but in reality, it's fucking outrageous. In spite of her urine and her potentially lethal tub of handcream, you'd need a total perspective bypass to think that this flaky old bat posed a possible threat. What could possibly have justified the ignominy of a three-hour interrogation for everyone on board? And what kind of morons were staffing that plane? Has it been drilled into them that passengers are the enemy, and every one of them is just itching for the chance to take the plane down?
This is the general impression I get at security check-ins at the best of times; for even before the latest hysteria, even before 9/11, there was already way too much security surrounding flights. I'm not convinced it contributes to safety; all it contributes to is an atmosphere of intimidation. Every passenger is treated like a criminal before he boards the plane. It's not often I agree with Michael O'Leary, the profiteering scumbag who runs RyanAir, but as he pointed out recently: if it's so important not to let dangerous cosmetics on board aircraft, why not provide the same screening on buses and trains? Perhaps it would reveal the ridiculous and sinister nature of security checking if everyone had to be frisked before they got on the 39B. It's also true that unlike buses, planes tend to go to foreign countries, and the vast security surrounding flights reinforces the idea held in island nations (the UK literally, the US mentally) that all evil can be traced to those nasty foreigners.
In reality, there's almost no danger in getting on a plane, least of all from your fellow passengers. Of the passengers on your transatlantic flight, 20% are so scared shitless that they can barely move, let alone cause an international incident; 15% are so stressed about getting their connection that the last thing they want to do is cause a second's delay; 10% are suffering from intense nicotine deprivation and are in no fit state to do anything, 10% are busy enjoying the view, 5% are busy enjoying the in-flight entertainment, and the rest just desperately want to get there, on time. The chance that one of the passengers wants to blow up or hijack the plane is so low it might as well be zero.
But increasingly, the rhetoric tells us not to treat our fellow passengers as "fellow passengers" at all, but to consider each one a potential terrorist, to be closely monitored for aberrant behaviour. The pre-flight safety demonstration could soon conclude with "be vigilant", or some other slogan from your favourite paranoid dystopia. And I for one intend to take this terrorist threat entirely seriously. Indeed, the next time I see some old lady pay too close attention to the moisturisers in the in-flight shopping catalogue, I will swiftly immobilise her with my pet python, and then whip out my mobile phone and call the president.