The BAA agent refused to give his name, turning his name badge over to prevent me from reading it. He cited some Terrorism Act” 

“These people really do expect the great British public to just comply, without reaction, to their most ludicrous orders.”

The army of officials seeking to lord it over us are getting mighty thin-skinned.

I’ve met a couple of these charmers in the last couple of weeks and before we storm the barricades and remove these oiks whence they came, this might provide some useful advice on how to rile them without them being able to lift a finger against you.

At Gatwick Airport on August 11, moving quickly towards the check in desk in the North Terminal, I tried to pull my suitcase on to the bottom end of the escalator, as I’d done in the South Terminal minutes before, and countless times at airports all round Europe and North America over what seems like 40 years.

“You can’t take that up there, you’ll have to take the lift,” said a young man dressed in a black woollen jacket.

“What? Who are you? Why not?” said I.

You can’t take that suitcase up there it’s too big. Health and Safety,” he said.

There were the usual barriers in place to stop you taking the steel trolleys up the moving staircase. I was wheeling a suitcase.

Bear in mind that this person wasn’t in uniform. I noticed later that he had a plastic thing dangling around his neck, but there was nothing to suggest he had an authority role. There were no signs saying that to take a suitcase up a moving staircase might endanger your health. Which of course, it won’t. It’s just another stupid rule invoked so that agents of BAA, or traffic wardens, or local authority garbage administrators, or passport control timewasters, or ticket collectors who try and fine you £20 for sleeping for one stop past your station with a valid ticket, can force their will on you. Just to show they can.

‘Elf ‘n Safety
Now I have to admit that anyone citing ‘elf ‘n safety to me is a bit like a red rag to a bull. Here was another inane invocation of bureaucratic stupidity. In my impatient urge to reach check-in as soon as possible I uttered a word that forced BAA’s apparatchiks into full anti-terrorism mode. “You jerk,” I said, as I reluctantly moved off towards the lifts.

A large BAA agent was lurking with intent and came over. “You are insulting and intimidating my staff,” said the BAA’S Richard Akogum. I learnt his name after some pestering later. 

“Come off it,” I said. “I only called him a jerk. What do you expect anyway when you put someone not identifiable as an official who asks you to do something stupid and counterproductive, then cites Health and Safety?”

These people really do expect the great British public to just comply, without reaction, to their most ludicrous orders.

I moved, via the lift, to the EasyJet check-in desk and handed over my passport and boarding card.

Apologise or get off the flight
Akogum moved in quickly and decisively, telling the EasyJet agent to stop my check in. I would have to apologise to the escalator monitor first. We moved back downstairs, and were joined by another BAA agent. In the lift I told Akogum how it would be my pleasure to write a story about this for my website. “You are threatening me,” Akogum said.

“No I’m not. That’s not a threat, it’s a promise. I promise to write about you and your outrageous over-the-top treatment of me,” said I, in front of witnesses.

We arrived at the foot of the escalator. I told the escalator monitor how sorry I was for insulting him, and how I would always be thankful for him saving me from myself and the mortal dangers of riding up an escalator with a suitcase. Akogum urged the man to say he wanted to take the case further, but he wouldn’t. Meanwhile Akogum was on the phone, he said, to the police, who would be arriving soon to sort me out. There was a chance I would be banned from flying for intimidating the staff. The second BAA agent refused to give his name, turning his name badge over to prevent me from reading it. He cited some Terrorism Act as his justification for remaining anonymous. Akogum returned, presumably having failed to interest the police in pursuing the case. He gave me his name in return for me giving mine to him.

I then went on my way, with my blood pressure bursting through levels probably endangering my ‘elf ‘n safety.

Thin-skinned servant of the state
A couple of weeks earlier at Heathrow I had a brush with another thin-skinned servant of the state. I’d arrived at Terminal 2 at 2pm on a Friday to find that immigration was full to overflowing. At least, the British and E.U. section was. The alien section was absolutely empty of incomers, but with desks fully manned. This is unusual. If the British section is busy, the alien area is usually fit to burst. The brain-boxes in the immigration service had contrived to create this huge backlog, which was intensely irritating, not least because the whole process is a complete waste of time – we had shown our passports an hour earlier in Cologne. These people are just a burden on the taxpayer, providing petty thin gruel in return for their safe, over-paid jobs and unfunded copper-bottomed pensions. By the time I reached the end of the line, these thoughts formed into a mild-rebuke.

“What a bunch of useless idiots you all are. Look at those empty desks over there, all fully—manned but doing nothing,” said I to the immigration agent.

Why aren’t these people rocket scientists?
As I handed my passport in at the desk, this agent moved in and grabbed my passport, and disappeared with it into the offices. I was left cooling my heels for about 10 minutes. A Mr A Earle returned my passport without a word, except to reluctantly tell me his name.

You might say that I deserved all I got, which wasn’t very much anyway except some mild humiliation and raised pulse rate. But my point is that if more people reacted to the thoughtless, incompetent bureaucrats who try to order us about, maybe they’d be less inclined to do so. And the best way to do it is with sarcasm, not verbal criticism.

Much better to have told the immigration agent what a great job he was doing and how we are all proud of him, how it’s amazing that such smart operatives aren’t employed as brain surgeons or rocket scientists, and how he and his wonderful colleagues are keeping us all safe from terrorism.

 Neil Winton – August 12, 2008