Rip off Britain: No 94
Clive Bull rails against being ripped off at Stansted Airport. £1 for four plastic bags? They're 'Avin a Giraffe!
16 Oct 2011, 16:04
Rip off bags
It was the first time for a while that I had travelled from Stansted. I’m used to the “low cost” airlines, and my expectations have been managed sufficiently that I expect to pay extra just to walk through the duty free. But this one incident really sums up Britain’s current obsession with grabbing every penny, wherever you can. We were all being herded like cattle through security to background cries of “belts and keys” and “laptops in the tray”. My shoes are off, my belt-less trousers falling down, and I’m being patted because the alarm went off - no idea why, there was no apparent metal anywhere. Could it be a filling? Maybe I just looked suspicious. And then I noticed my tray being diverted off in another direction on the conveyor belt. What now?
My tray, and many others, was being diverted to another section, it transpires, because of a “non-regulation” plastic bag. You know, the small clear plastic bags you put your 100 ml liquids and pastes in? Mine was re-sealable, as required, and the regulation dimensions. But it turns out there was a tiny bit of white writing on the outside which made it non compliant. The woman next to me was having the same trouble. “This hasn’t happened before, I’ve been a regular flier for years,’ she complained. “No you haven’t!” she was told, rather rudely. Presumably she had been a regular flier - just not from Stansted. So we were told we weren’t going anywhere unless we BOUGHT a plastic bag from the airport dispenser. You get four in a little sphere for a pound. I handed the other three out to people in the queue. This is apparently nothing new, and doesn’t happen at all airports, but it did smack of profiteering rather than being in the interests of safety.
The real nonsense of the exercise was exposed when I transferred the contents of the illegal bag into the new approved bag. My son’s epipen, which we were told had to go in the bag, wouldn’t fit. “That’s medical,” said the security man authoritatively. “That’ll be fine in that one,” he said, pointing to my original, non-regulation bag! So be warned, at Stansted, and certain other airports, they will charge you £1 for a plastic bag, along with three others you don’t want. And I thought M&S bags were pricey. At least they didn’t say it was helping the environment.
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When travelling a few hundred miles take the car. It may cost more, depending on the number travelling, and it might take longer. But the contrast of independent travel with the horrors of imprisonment and subjugation that modern flying has become makes it worthwhile.
16/10/2011 21:02