TERRORISM
Daily Telegraph - October 2006

I’m the kind of guy who fails public service psychological exams: I'm afraid of heights because I'm worried I might be overwhelmed by the desire to throw myself off; I think all the ink blots look like rude bits and these days, I cannot get on a plane without imagining ways in which I could blow it up.

Like sex fantasies we think are kinky but are almost depressingly common, daydreams of how we could cause terrorist chaos - or what we would do in response to it - have become the diversion of choice for the bored man (and I suspect it's quite male) standing at the baggage carousel.

The uncomfortable truth of this was revealed to me this week when I made it through the departure gate at London City airport with a tube of toothpaste in my carry-on. Since the recent terror plots this is a big no-no but, like walking out of a shop with something I later realised I forgot to pay for, I was very excited to have gotten away with it.

Of course, I did not smuggle my contraband intentionally. Instead I relied on the general uselessness of British bureaucrats, who were too busy discussing last night's match to spot a $2 tube of Colgate with a million-dollar X-ray machine.

The toothpaste incident was not, however, merely a convenient symbol for the slow decline of post-Victorian England.

After much travel in the “age of terror” I have come to the conclusion that airport security is a farce, a theatrical formality designed to do nothing more than make us feel, seemingly contradictorily, more secure by making us more nervous.

Name a terror plot that has been foiled by the waving of a wand over someone's chest. And as for the al-Qaeda operatives being trained in remote parts of Pakistan to use cutlery against us, perhaps it's worth noting that Aboriginal people fought for 40,000 years with deadly accuracy using nothing more than fire-hardened stick.

This is not to say that I think airport security is unnecessary. But I'm sure I'm not the only person whose first thought on hearing about the liquid explosives plot was: How hard could it be to strap a bag of liquid to your body?

The genius of terrorism has been to convince us that the threat is everywhere when, in truth, you're more likely to die of botulism contracted from a Heathrow cafe.
The absurdities of my toothpaste smuggling were heightened by the fact that I missed my connection and got stuck in Frankfurt for the night. In the morning, I boarded my flight armed with my toothpaste and a bottle of duty-free cologne. This raises two important questions: how can liquids be dangerous in the UK and not in Germany; and, to what degree have we created our fears for ourselves?

© Brendan Shanahan 2008