A lovely article in The Register describing a recent debate in the House of Lords about the airline liquids ban. To quote:

"We continuously monitor the effectiveness of, in particular, the liquid security measures..."

How, one might ask? But hold on:

"The fact that there has not been a serious incident involving liquid explosives indicates, I would have thought, that the measures that we have put in place so far have been very effective."

Ah, that's how. On which basis the measures against asteroid strike, alien invasion and unexplained nationwide floods of deadly boiling custard have also been remarkably effective.

So they think! Once my Automated Ovinator is complete, all the roads in England will be transformed into Lemon Custard! And then I'll show them all! Wahahahaha!

Notice how, over the past five years, American airport security has gotten systematically more invasive, more edgy, and more unpleasant? Well, apparently it still hasn't gotten more effective to go with that. You can still transport as many bombs as you want aboard aircraft, just so long as they aren't hidden inside your shoe.

(Which, really, shouldn't surprise anyone. Fake security monitors objects and has lots of procedures; real security monitors people. But that requires extensive training and may involve things like profiling, which are politically unpalatable. Even the best physical security screening of luggage doesn't really achieve anything, since there are plenty of other places you could smuggle things aboard. [Left as an exercise for the reader -- I can think of some really fun ones that they'll never be able to screen for without causing a riot])