I'm expecting to get flamed for this if there are any BAA security people on this board (and possibly by others...), but as someone who travels a minimum of two return journeys a week through LHR, I'm rather pissed off by this whole issue.

Without breaching the Official Secrets Act, could someone please explain how an incremental 20ml is sufficiently dangerous to justify such a Draconian measure? I'm sorry but I just don't buy it...

I said as much to a security guard in Brussels a few months back (and in response to his question of where would I like to put my 120ml bottle that I couldn't take on-board, I suggested he could "shove it where the sun don't shine" - my advice is never to make jokes to Flemish security guards...)

It reminds me of a sign I saw earlier today in T4, which said something like taking your laptops out of your bag for seperate x-raying was "no longer necessary". I'm always amused at the abuse of the word "necessary". I think more appropriate language might be "no longer arbitrarily required by someone with no hold on reality who thinks their intellectually-challenged colleagues might not be able to recognise a laptop within a bag". I wonder what training the muppets took that enabled this "necessary" step to be removed. Perhaps it involved removing their heads from... oh never mind.

Finally, I accidentally left a bottle of mineral water in my bag last week when going through T4 security (please don't ring 999!). No-one said a word. Before you say well maybe it was empty / hidden behind something / etc, I should point out it was a 1L bottle and full. (I'm recovering from the lurgie (again) and needed to hydrate before flying - but completely forgot to drink the bottle on the Heathrow Express.) I think the numpties (and there seemed to be dozens of them standing around doing SFA) were more interested in talking to each other than paying attention to the scanners. I pointed it out to one of them, and the idiot didn't even ask for the bottle! I had to offer it to her and she didn't even seem to know what to do with it. I mean, really! Think of all the terrible damage a 1L bottle of Evian could do...

I'm glad I got that off my chest... Sorry - it's been a long day. Flame away...