Trousers down, arms up!

Over the last few months work and pleasure have taken me from India via the Middle East to Europe and onto North America. That’s a lot of flying, and a lot of security checks. Out of all the airport security I encountered, it was Western airport security — unsurprisingly — that was the most invasive. It was also the most pointless, despite the rhetoric that it supposedly makes us “feel safer” and that it is necessary to thwart the terrorist threat by having to queue for hours, then shuffle through the metal detector in your socks while holding up your belt-less trousers — after, of course, quaffing whatever drink you accidentally had in your bag. The biggest irony is that the Middle East (bar Jordan), that hotbed of terrorism and conflict, is one of the easiest regions on earth to pass through airport security. Equally puzzling is why, after nail