You may remember, early last month, my story of how I was prevented from taking my tennis racket on to a flight departing from Manchester on the basis that it was “an offensive weapon”. Well, a few weeks later, I flew out of Manchester again (minus my tennis racket, of course) in the company of a gentleman who I shall  not identify other than to call him Fred and tell you that he is 80 later this year! Since the majority of his flying was in the rather more gentle and civilized pre-2001 era of air travel Fred was not familiar with modern airport security and so I gave him detailed instructions of what is and isn’t allowed in hand luggage these days. Once we’d checked in and picked up our boarding passes we moved on to security satisfied that we would sail through without any difficulty. I went through the x-ray no problem but the beep went off when Fred tried to pass through. He was asked to go through the full body scan, evidently the most detailed scan of all and the one where you stand by the machine perfectly still with your hands above your head.

He passed it without any further delay and on we went to the departure lounge where, to his horror, Fred discovered that he had inadvertently brought along his pocket Swiss Army penknife having forgotten to remove it from his trousers! The question was, how on Earth did he manage to get through security and that all-singing and dancing modern scanner?

Anyway, the problem would be returning home from Spain since neither of us had hold luggage in which to place the penknife. So, on the day of his return Fred decided that he would take the penknife through airport security and explain to the official that  it was no more than a grooming tool containing, as it did, a pair of scissors, a nail file and a tooth pick. He was indeed stopped this time but the Spanish official, evaluating the risk and displaying a little imagination allowed him to travel with the penknife in his pocket.

So what does this tell us? Well, perhaps Spanish officials (or at least this one) are more lax and easy-going than their British counterparts and are capable of exercising a discretion based on common sense. More significant and worrying though is that the top of the range and no doubt extremely expensive Manchester scanner didn’t pick up the penknife. Various questions therefore arise. What else would the scanner fail to detect? How good is UK security and how much of it is just for show to give the appearance that the authorities know what they are doing. In short, how safe are we?