He also mentioned the question of removing laptops from a bag and sending it through separately. Now, I had a conversation with one of the security people on that subject (a real one, not a row!
) asking how come they'd gone back to asking for them to be removed at Heathrow when there was a spell where they could be kept in the bag. His answer, for what it's worth, was that it caused more delays because of bags having to be checked and re-scanned so often when something showed up on the screen.
In other words, the decision to revert to laptops being screened separately was less to do with security as such, and more to do with speed.