So we went to Corfu last week for a short break. I was going to write this post sometime this week, once I got round to it, then it seems there has been some incident at Manchester Airport last night, involving some muslims getting filled in by the police
The following story has absolutely no relevance to what what happened yesterday, it's just a totally unrelated story about Manchester Airport security, and nobody gets beaten up
So we're in the queue for security and we've just got to the bit where you put all your stuff in the trays. As per usual, I'm in a queue, so I'm stuck behind a fuckwit. Happens every time. This time it was two middle aged women who had been living in caves for the past decade and thought it would be a good idea to pack all their liquids (various make-up items, I think) in their case and had to take everything out in order to find it all. This took a while, so me and the Mrs were twiddling our thumbs and people watching for a bit
A large family of muslims turned up in the lane next to us
The security lady who was dealing with us lost her shit and went full on with this family, going through all their stuff before sending it through on the trays. She then told them all to take their shoes off
The patriarch of the group complained about this for two reasons: There was a queue of people waiting for the scanners, all wearing shoes. He was only wearing a pair of flip flops
The security woman started shouting, "ALL SHOES OFF, NO EXCEPTIONS!"
This went on for a bit and we got to put our stuff in the trays. The Mrs looked at me a bit bemused and asked why we were being asked to remove our shoes, when there was a queue of shoe wearers still at the scanners. I suggested it might be because of the muslims and decided to do an experiment, by walking off to the scanners with mty shoes on
I heard shouts of, "OI, OI, HEY, OI, YOU, BLUGH, GAH, SCREEE!", then another security woman came to stop me
Security woman: Excuse me, they want you to go back
Me: Oh I'm sorry, why?
Security woman: I don't know, she's just calling you back
So I went back and got yelled at, "SHOES OFF, SHOES OFF!". I asked why, when people in the queue were wearing shoes and she yelled again, "ALL SHOES OFF, NO EXCEPTIONS!"
So I asked the security woman who had stopped me what was going on, and she went round to ask her colleague. "ALL SHOES OFF, NO EXECEPTIONS!". Yes, she even yelled it at her mate. So the other security woman came back to me and said, "Sorry I don't know, they must have just made the decision after those other people went to the scanners"
So I approached the first securlty woman and asker her
Me: Are you just making this up as you go along?
Security woman: ALL SHOES OFF, NO EXCEPTIONS!
Me: Why, when you can see people in the queue for the scanner wearing their shoes?
Security woman: ALL SHOES OFF, NO EXCEPTIONS!
Me: Are you going to answer my question, or just keep yelling?
Security woman: ALL SHOES OFF, NO EXCEPTIONS!
Me: Well at least you answered one of my questions *Takes off shoes*
I normally wear boots with heels through security, to save space in my case, and I always have to take those off, but I didn't take them this time as we only had hand luggage. Going back a bit, I've even been asked to take off trainers, when everybody had to take off whatever shoes they were wearing, so I'm used to going through the scanners in my socks, but this irrational selectiveness was new to me, as was the shouty robot who made the decision
Anyway, we got through security without further incident
The muslim family were all body searched as they went through the scanners and all their luggage was hand searched after the x-rays. They were still being searched as we walked off to the bar, and probably got anally probed, too
It was obvious why the shoe thing happened; this one security woman got uber paranoid about the muslims, but tried to cover up her actions by pretending the rules applied to everyone
If she was going to do what she did, she should have had the courage of her convictions and explained to the muslims that they were being subjected to greater security because it is their demographic that are more likely to be hiding bombs in their flip flops
What she actually did, was so transparent, I was embarrassed for her
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