Any terrorists about?

[Andy Burns]

It probably is a reasonable test for the short term, but now the terrorists know they can't completely gut a laptop and then get it through security with the excuse that the battery is flat, so they'll have to make it keep working and only be half-gutted, if the intelligence-led tests keept up with that sort of development every few months, fair enough, but in general the "something" becomes a long term measure even if it's just to make people feel safe the same way as the bottled water and toothpaste rules have.

[John Rumm]

It would only be a minor change of plan for the terrorist to take a train instead.

[John Williamson]

At which point they would find that on Eurostar at least, the security checks are almost the same as for flying, and you need a *much* bigger bomb to damage a train than a plane. Unless it's on the track, set to break a rail shortly before a train is due.

[Nightjar]

According to my Home Guard Manual, that needs a couple of pounds of guncotton.

[John Williamson]

Or a slab of C-4 about the size of a large bar of chocolate.

[Nightjar]

We learned how to make guncotton in chemistry at school. We never found out how to make C4 :-)

[The Other Mike]

[Nightjar]

Probably as well we never knew. Somebody would have been sure to try to make it. I'm not certain how good the guncotton we made was. It burned spectacularly quickly in open air, but nobody fancied trying to make a detonator.

[John Williamson]

Instructions are available, an anonymising server is recommended for the research. ;-)

[Nightjar]

We knew what to make. We just couldn't find anybody willing to risk losing a finger or two :-)

[F Murtz]

Here in the outback they used to have smallish planes for moving about Australia and one of the tradesmen I worked with related a trip he had once, all the passengers got on the plane and sat down to wait for the pilot after a time a seemingly drunk man got up and said, well if the pilot is not coming I might as well do it and he walked to the front to the cockpit and took off.He was the pilot playing tricks on everybody.

[Tim Streater]

Obviously a pilot to avoid in future.

[charles]

I was also done on one of the Orkney inter-island flights on an April first. The pilot got sacked.

[Windmill]

What chance is there of that happening when GCHQ et alii have the lowdown on all politicians *and* their families?

I wonder how many of the people accused of sex scandals in the current witch hunts were uncovered by or on behalf of outside interests.

The whole thing appalls me. Hunting down 80 and 90 year olds for what did or maybe didn't happen long long ago. Jailing for a long time people who are supposed to have done to teenagers what most of today's teenagers are keen to experience or to do to themselves.

[Windmill]

Bottled water and toothpaste rules worry me. Because if there was nothing to worry about, they wouldn't have such nutty rules.

Maybe by not flying I'm just doing as those worried about balance-of-payments problems would have me do.

[Windmill]

Not to mention cars, lorries, buses, ultralights, hang gliders, bicycles, hiking boots ...........

If our Glorious Leaders ever considered what the other guys might do in response to their actions, and acted (or didn't act) accordingly, that might ease these situations.

[The Natural Philosopher]

You jest, surely?

[Nightjar]

There was a very large flap when a petrol tanker, with Army markings, was stolen from a local company, which makes them. As it turned out, it seems to have been ordinary crooks, rather than terrorists, who took it.

[alan]

But then you see on TV an account of a real criminal investigation where they had to fully dismantle a suspect car before they found what they were looking for. A 10/30 minute search will have found nothing.

[alan]

At some regional airports you can turn up 1 hour before the flight, go through security and still be at the departure gate in plenty of time.

Try this at the larger airports for the first UK flights in the morning and the chances that you would miss the flight. To be sure of catching a flight 2+hours is more normal. If you have driven to the airport also factor in 30+ minutes to get from the medium/long term car parks. Sod's law says when you turn up really early it will be the day when security is fully staffed and the queues are short.

And then there is 1.5 hours it took for baggage handlers at Heathrow to unload a aircraft.