Bertie Ahern gave us his personal assurance that George Bush had given him his personal assurance that prisoners were not transported through Shannon on their way to being tortured.

From this we can safely deduce that . . . prisoners were transported through Shannon on their way to being tortured. It is kind of obvious.

As Amnesty succinctly put it, the same assurances were given to the British government and shown to be false. Our country played its part in the War on Human Rights because Ahern was willing to do what he was told. Does anyone else remember when we had a reputation as a small nation that cared about international justice? Now we're famous as the small nation that will break any rule, legal or moral, for money. You know, all that money we have.

Speaking of the comforts of air travel, I was depressed by the Saturday Show. In general of course, but in particular when Twink got a big round of applause when she spoke in favour of body scanners that can see your skin beneath your clothes. She really had the crowd going for safety at the price of privacy.

On the other hand, perhaps this is a healthy change. I doubt if Twink or any media figure in Ireland would have come out in favour of public nudity ten years ago. Perhaps we're getting more relaxed.

As I discovered last year in the traditional saunas of Finland, being naked in public is not a nightmare situation if everyone else is doing it too. Hell, if we think this through we could save a lot of money and hassle by checking our garments as baggage.

I guarantee you'll get to like it. Clothes after all are really just a commentary on your body. When you take them off, you give up trying to explain yourself.

But hold on now, we're seriously talking about introducing these scanners. Even though the one attempt to smuggle a bomb that they might have prevented even in theory failed in a way that can only be described as ‘hilarious’. The underpants bomber achieved nothing except setting fire to his own genitals – and a shoo-in for the next Darwin Award. If we react to that with electronic strip-searching, how are we going to respond to the first idiot with a bomb up his bum?

There is no technical reason not to bury one in the fundament, it is only the delicate sensibilities of mass-murderers that have prevented it happening so far. They may be willing to eviscerate children and burn the faces off random strangers, but they would never do something that . . . unmanly. For now that is. When they finally decide that there is no other option, they will shove bombs up there with relish.

So what to do? The scanners won't see these beauties beneath the skin. You can't X-ray the bottom area because that's where people keep their gonads. Really there is only one way to be completely sure of everyone boarding a plane. The good news is that it's cheaper than you might have expected, costing nothing more than a single disposable elbow-length latex glove.

Then at last we'll all be truly free.

Richard.Chapman@Gmail.com