Another sad day for the world as we wake up to the information that a massive plot to bring down in and around a number of planes was thwarted.  I am presently here in the US after a week and will be preparing to fly home to Glasgow tomorrow morning.  Thanks to jetlag, I am somewhat forced to be watching CNN and FOX for my information on the present state of affairs.

Ironically I am more horrified at some of the statements coming out of the news anchors, check out some of these classics

• "Is High Wycombe known for its terrorist links?" [CNN]
  
• "Do not use your cell phone near a suspicious package incase you set it off" [CNN - wtf?]
• "Liquid hair gel, is really the most dangerous carry-on that authorities are looking for" [FOX, so maybe you're not worth it after all!]
• "one thing we know about al qaeda is they learn" [CNN - you think?]
• "you are watching CNN, the most trusted name in news" [CNN - uh hu]
• "I am sure they are watching CNN throughout the airport" [CNN - great plug]
• "Some people don't want to put their makeup in their check luggage incase it spills, but people are adapting" [NBC - oh the hard ship!]
• "They can buy a lot of the ingredients for bomb making from the duty free shops" [FOX - so no real need to bring it with you!!]

Naturally, with so little information coming out of the official sources, they are having to do some serious airtime filling, and this is a great opportunity to roll on the so called experts, and still have time to plug their books on so called security measures etc.  It's good to know that in a crisis like this, the publishers aren't missing a trick to for a bit of promotion to help flagging sales.  They are also rolling the same video tape all the time of a people in the airport, so its not that the queues aren't getting smaller, its just they are stuck in a time loop!

CNN was quite exciting, they had one of their reporters report via their cell phone, her journey from JFK as she went through the security check points.  But, it wasn't quite as a dramatic as the producer was probably hoping "no i got straight through with no extra delays than normal".  Classic.  Maybe she was too early.

But one thing I noticed on FOX was a specialist reporter whose main role was to watch the web sites and what they were saying!  Although when they cut to her, she had to admit that she couldn't see a lot of the sites due to the increased amount of traffic.  You just can't make this stuff up!

One thing that I am not seeing is the credit of the fact that they actually stopped this one.  It's all doom and gloom. Obviously the UK intelligence community have done a sterling job here nipping this one before it got to execute.  Who knows what's still on the cards, but its good to hear success stories, gives you a certain amount of faith.