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Liquid explosive? Mine's a Martini...

Last updated at 12:14 20 August 2006

Snakes on a plane? That really is the least of my worries. I mean how is one to cope without moisturiser? Flying plays havoc with one's skin and the amount of alcohol it now takes just to get on a plane means that one needs all the rehydration one can get.

Luckily, though, the rules have just been changed. As they are daily. Last week you couldn't take any liquid on board. You still can't, except that which you buy in duty-free. But not if you are going to America.

So why can I take booze on a flight to Seville but not to San Francisco? What might I do on a transatlantic flight? Mix a particularly spectacular Martini?

Extra security should make us feel more secure. Neither the Government's pronouncements nor the incredibly muddled security advice does that. Apart from the general public scepticism about the plot itself, there is a real sense that we all feel conned as several agencies try to blame each other for the chaos.

There is a feeling that no one is actually in charge except John Reid who would arm-wrestle Prezza to the floor just to get on TV and tell us to 'be afraid, be very afraid'.

The idea that BAA, the private firm which makes a fortune out of airport parking and Body Shop franchises, is in charge of our security is frightening. The owners of giant shopping malls, in whose interest it is we loiter as long as possible, are the same people responsible for detecting jihadists? The whole thing, as one senior airport source says, 'verges on the surreal'.

It's not often I agree with the obnoxious Michael O'Leary of Ryanair but, when he asks what the difference in threat is between a laptop bag and a small wheelie bag, he is right. Surely you have the stuff to make a bomb or you haven't.

Liquid explosives are not new. They were used in 1994 on a Philippines L aircraft bound for the US when a passenger was killed. And, with all the focus on transatlantic flights, why would anyone so inclined not be happy to blow up a short haul flight?

We have been repeatedly told that the bombs in Madrid and Bombay prove Al Qaeda is targeting every 'civilised' country.

At least the days of the WAG who cried because she couldn't have 17 pieces of hand luggage will become a thing of the past.

But will the odd passivity that flying induces get worse? What with tasting baby milk and carrying tampons in transparent bags, the whole thing has become an exercise in humiliation.

This is the fault of the terrorists. Well some of it, yes. But some of it is the fault of the authorities. The experience of flying is now fraught and circumscribed by arbitrary rules. Some of them I approve of - the banning of laptops makes some men act as if the world is

going to end if they can't sharpen up their Power Point presentation. Others are just weird - women business travellers may choose between a handbag and a laptop but they can't have both. Some are nonsensical. You can take perfume but not nappy cream. It's all a horrible snapshot of a people made miserable not by the nutjobs that

want to kill us all but by petty and unworkable officialdom. As always, we are told that this is being done for our own good.

As I measure my luggage and realise it exceeds the arbitrary 18x14in measurement, I wonder if this really is the case. Now annoyingly I need a new case. And soon our Government will, too.