Flying into 2010

Well here we are again at YVR heading to JFK. At least I wasn't shoveling snow everyday like last year at this time. I must say the new flying restrictions for US bound flights had me a little rattled. No carry-on! Are they crazy? Short haul flights are only bearable because of carry-on. Carry-on carry-off, simple concept. At least carry-on is x-rayed, screened, observed and there are some established and understandable rules that are applied almost uniformly across many of the US States, parts of Canada and sporadically across the rest of the world.

I'm not generally a conspiracy theorist, but, I do believe it is a conspiracy of the transport authorities of various governments to save money by not putting in sniffer scanners, body scanners, and of course x-ray machines for ALL checked luggage. They want to save money. The technology has been out there for years. They quite simply just want to save money. It is like they are wanting to pace the escalation in air flight safety incidents with monetary cost. I think ideally they would like the passenger rules to be for all bags, coats and clothing to be checked. The idea is to have everybody fly naked thus removing the opportunity of a shoe bomber or the new threat - the underwear bomber. Appealing or appalling as this might sound it does leave open the possibility of the suppository bomber. Yes, you read me correctly - the suppository bomber.

Now doesn't it make more sense to have proper sniffer and scanning equipment? Government officials are paid a lot of money, and those politicians, with lobby money and graft, paid even more. Consider all of the time on TV and the news over the last ten years that they have been talking about security, airport security, security in the air. If they would just stop yapping about it and do something about it then all of those people that travel regularly to the US wouldn't be the ones inconvenienced by this lack of Government spending and the victims of excessive government yapping.