Metal cutlery on flights

Do airlines and airport authorities make up the rules as they go along? On my flight with XL to the Caribbean, passengers were given with metal cutlery. I'm not complaining (the service was excellent and my knife sliced effortlessly through my bread roll) but if XL can do it, why can't other airlines? Are they any hard and fast rules, or are they just toying with us?

Gatwick security put the boot in

It appears that UK airport security staff have quietly abandoned the screening of passengers’ shoes. Yesterday I passed through Gatwick South and for the first time in months I noticed that nobody going through security was told to take off their footwear and put it through the scanning machines.

So shoe bombers no longer pose a threat? If so, why weren’t we, the travelling public, told?

On the other hand, security staff are as keen as ever to confiscate moisturiser and perfume. I saw one woman yesterday hauled out of the queue and publicly humiliated after she admitted she had forgotten to put a couple of bottles of cosmetics in her checked baggage.

A smirking security officer threatrically scopped up the bottles and threw them loudly into a bin. The “guilty” passenger, who only spoke broken English, looked flustered and confused.

And they wonder why we dislike them so?