Only in England

Bureaucrats in the United Kingdom must be getting jealous that their French counterparts are getting all the attention, so they have gone above and beyond the call of duty to demonstrate unparalleled government stupidty. Security officials at Heathrow Airport barred a man from flying until he removed a t‑shirt with an image of an armed robot. The Evening Standard (not The Onion) reports:

An airline passenger claimed that a security guard threatened to arrest him because he was wearing a T‑shirt showing a cartoon robot with a gun. Brad Jayakody, 30, from London, said he was stopped from passing through security at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 after his Transformers T‑shirt was deemed ‘offensive.’ …Mr Jayakody said the first guard started joking with him about the Transformers character depicted on his French Connection T‑shirt. ’ ”Then he explains that since Megatron is holding a gun, I’m not allowed to fly,’ he said. ‘It’s a 40ft tall cartoon robot with a gun as an arm. There is no way this shirt is offensive in any way, and what I’m going to use the shirt to pretend I have a gun?

Travelers in the United States, needless to say, have no reason to be smug. The keystone cops at the Transportation Security Administration, after all, have become experts at confiscating such well‐​known terrrorist weapons as fingernail clippers and bottles of shampoo.