Holmes loses laptop, gets out handbag…

Paul Holmes, President, CEO and Editor of the Holmes Report, has thrown a right little hissy fit over on his blog.

To cut a long story short, Holmes was supposed to be flying to the US from the UK last week, but found that UK security services had rather inconveniently scuppered a plot by terrorists to blow up a number of planes flying out of the UK and bound for, umm, the US (which might have included, I suppose, the one upon which Holmes was meant to be travelling).

Faced with having to check his beloved laptop into the hold and thereby lose a few hours of his preciously productive time, Holmes decided to be a smartarse and catch the Eurostar to Brussels, stay overnight in a hotel and then buy a new plane ticket to the US, just so he’d be able to take his laptop on board. Brilliantly, his laptop found the additional travel too much and expired before the flight.

So frustrating did Holmes find the whole experience, and so much value does he clearly place on his working time, that he’d rather forego airport security than lose the ability to write ever-so-important reports about PR companies while he’s flying. In his own words, “…for me personally, the trade-off isn’t worth it. I’d rather take my chances with the bomb-making whackos.”

In fact, Holmes would actually pay more (a whole $1,000 no less) to fly on a ‘no-security’ airline, one “that didn’t wait me stand in line for half an hour, take off my shoes and belt, start up my laptop, surrender my iPod and generally inconvenience me in an effort to persuade me that all of that will somehow make me safer.”

Which is fair enough, I suppose, if you’re willing to take the risk yourself. But when terrorists have taken to getting on planes with less-than-perfect security and then fly them into buildings killing thousands of innocent civilians that haven’t chosen to “take my chances with the bomb-making whackos”, it doesn’t seem to us like a very mature position to take.

Get over yourself, Holmes.