I spend too much of my life on planes, in the air and hanging around at airports. I also know more than is healthy about airline lounges, cabin upgrades and new routes - not through choice it just lands on my lap.

Recently whilst abroad I asked my travel agent to see about changing flights back from HK to LHR (see airport codes!) and one offer was with Air New Zealand. Now they are a good airline but I thought that they only flew to the UK the other way round over the Pacific then stopover in LAX. But no here was flight to London via HK. Strange I thought. Bit of investigation shows that ANZ have switched their Boeing 747 fleet to flying this route and downgraded the LAX route to Boeing 777s.
Why? Because people don't want the hassle and inconvenience of transting in the US. If you stop over you have to have the Biometric passport, your fingerprint and retina scanned. Not to mention the complete inability of US airports to deal with security arrangements without overdramatising the whole procedure. Stopping over in HK involves about a 15-20 min wait for your bags, a 5 min queue at Immigration - job done. The Kiwis are sensible people and are voting with their feet, nice to see their Airline taking heed.

Personally I'd never transit or visit the US unless I really had to for similar reasons. Even travelling through Heathrow is more a pain in the arse these days - which is saying something in itself.

And I'm not the only one of that opinion. In August, following the introduction of the draconian cabin baggage regulations, transit passengers using LHR dropped between 3%-5%. Reasons cited included the hassle, the extra security, reduction in carry on baggage when compared to other Euro Hubs like Schipol and Frankfurt. Over a year this reduction in passengers would cost UK based airlines 10-100millions of pounds, not to mention the loss of earning to BAA and the wider economy through transit facilities. Seems like we're finally back to a level footing with the rest of Europe on cabin baggage and liquids - though the idea of queuing up to security then taking off your belt, your shoes, pulling out your laptop and then ensuring your carry-on liquids are in a sealed clear plastic bag is hardly appealing. Perhaps I could balance a ball on my nose whilst reciting key passages from the bible, blindfold.

As ever these "security" measures are there to be seen rather than for their effectiveness. They achieve very little apart from inconvenience and as ever in this world the further to the front of the plane you fly the less hassle you encounter and the quicker it is dealt with. If such security is required why drop it now. Not the economic imperitave again, is it. All this at a time when the US airlines in Chapter 11 protection are making profits again - see United Airlines.

Anyway time to go......

SO its official. The UK is a surveillance state. This the conclusion of the UK Information Commisioner, Richard Thomas. It ranges from monitoring of all tele-communications and email by your friendly neighbourhood security agency – no not MI5 or the SIS but NSA, yep they are American not British – to more discrete marketing surveillance in the name of customer profiling ("dataveillance") garnered by loyalty cards, credit card transactions and mobile phone useage. And nice to know that we only have to share one CCTV camera between 14 of us in the glorious United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland putting us proudly at the top of the league for CCTV cameras per person. Add this to GPS transmitters fitted to company vehicles, keystroke monitoring in some organisations , the largest DNA database both by number and per capita and it makes you wonder what “they” don’t know or could n’t find out about us.

So an Englishman’s (and Scot’s, Ulster and Welsh) home is his castle. Its just the most observed and monitored castle in the world. Mr Thomas states

“We really do have a society which is premised both on state secrecy and the state not giving up its supposed right to keep information under control while, at the same time, wanting to know as much as it can about us."

And furthermore

“Today I fear that we are in fact waking up to a surveillance society that is already all around us,"

Well that’s nice. I know lets make this all simpler.

How could we bring more detailed information on each and every individual in the country in an easy to access format?

Oooh, I know what about ID cards. We can say they’ll help on the war against terrorism and organized crime – people will love that.

But won’t that need a big computer system?

Yeah well probably. Still we can probably get the people who are working on the NHS Digital Patient Records system to look at it for us.

But didn’t several of those companies already leave the project handing millions back to the Government as they believe the project will be such a disaster it will harm their international reputation, not to mention that it will be unsecure, unreliable and very late.

Yeah, well there is that.

And won’t it cost a lot of money?

Well only £5.6billion according to our figures.

But I thought the LSE calculated a cost of somewhere between £10.6 billion and £19.2 billion.

Ah don’t worry it’ll be self-financing - we’ll get the public to pay for that by making the system voluntary.

How does that work then?

Well if you need a new Passport then we’ll charge you the £100 for the ID card as well. Simple.

But how is that voluntary?

Well you don’t have to have a passport do you? Unless you want to leave the country of course. And why would you want to do that? If you leave we won’t be able to keep an eye on you. For your own safety of course!

Still, nice to know that rebellion still burns brightly in the UK. But the torch is now held by the youth of the country, most likely to torch a wheelie bin or light a spliff no doubt if todays report is to be believed. British teenagers are top the Euro table for underage sex, smoking, drinking, fighting and petty crime aswell as many other such social skills. Plus another report says that these same “kids” look on ASBOs as a “badge of honour” or a “diploma”. So all this despite the all the government’s ill-drafted new laws, massive surveillance presence, increased police numbers and powers etc.

But don’t worry we’re winning the war on terror………………

And there’s the whole angle on flying that I was going to jot down but after that I’m not sure I should in case I mysteriously disappear from the street one day, despite the CCTV cameras’ omnipresence.