I can’t say I’m in the least bit surprised that BA chairman Martin Broughton’s outburst about airport security checks has struck such a chord. Air travel is a bit of a misery at the best of times, especially if you travel Ryanair or aren’t sufficiently well-heeled to turn left as you enter a plane. But the security stuff of the last decade has made things far worse.

The kind of blanket measures that are currently used are oppressive, time-wasting and often entirely inconsistent. I don’t even want to think about the number of times I’ve had half a small tub of Sudocrem – baby nappy rash cream for the uninitiated – confiscated by one of the amazingly rude and unbending CAA goons at Stansted. That’s after I’ve been forced to sip baby milk and various other vile toddler organic smoothies in front of an unsmiling operative.  How many terrorists have ever bought down a plane with all three of their dearly loved kids on it?

My point is that the current system, because it is so undiscriminating, is desperately unintelligent. It makes flight travel a misery for everyone which is exactly what the jihadist nut jobs want. We play precisely into their hands.

Sooner or later we’ve got to accept that airport security needs to get into a bit of intelligent profiling. So a 96 year old Bolivian nun heading from La Paz on the trip of a lifetime to Rome should probably attract less interest than a twenty year old male Yemeni who has paid cash for his one way ticket, shaved his body and has a welcome note in his pocket from the seventy two virgins he’s expecting to greet him with all sorts of favours when he arrives in paradise. This may be tough on law-abiding young, male Yemenis on the move – but that’s unfortunate, not racist prejudice. It’s just common sense and proper policing.

Last week I travelled through Nairobi back to London and had to go through the same x-ray machine and frisking twice before getting on a BA flight. The machines were side by side.

However, possibly the most absurd personal experience I’ve had was on the Scottish island of Islay a couple of weeks back. I’ve written a piece about the Scotch whisky industry – out in MT next week, hurry while stocks last etc – and I was leaving  Islay’s tiny airport (which is the size of two Portakabins). Four uniformed security personnel gave each and everyone of the twelve people on my flight out – one of only two aircraft movements each day –  the kind of intense going over to be expected by a member of the Bin Laden clan.

These security clowns are the laughing stock of the island and I dread to think what they cost. But, of course, there had to be some even bigger clown on our flight who was revealed to have a pair of nail scissors in her handbag. The look of triumphant self-justification on the grim face of the jobsworth was very dispiriting indeed.

We’ve all got politics on the brain. And it isn’t healthy.

I received an email yesterday from Luke Johnson complaining about the latest issue of MT. ‘Too much politics I think,’ he wrote. ‘We can get that every day in the papers, or from the BBC. MT should be about business – not about Will Hutton, Alistair Darling, or management in the public sector.’ Even if he wasn’t a star MT columnist I’d sit up and take notice.

The problem is that business is intensely political at the moment. We’re going through one of those periods where politics is centre stage: what politicians decide about banks, public expenditure, and quantitative easing is pretty important to us all. It’s not just a steady hand on the tiller of the ship of state as it was pre-2008; we’re going round the Horn with the sails getting ripped and able seamen falling from the rigging. Intervention is going to be with us for some time yet.

There’s a strong sense that many appear paralysed while sitting impotently waiting for the announcement of George Osborne’s expenditure cuts in late October. These will affect all of us, whether we’re in business or not. Certainly those who deal with government, taking its money, are all in a hiatus at the moment waiting to see if the knife lands on them.

But Johnson is right. Politics is a distraction. We need to get the Coalition, and cuts, and child benefit, and aircraft carrier expenditure out of our minds and return to concentrating on running our businesses. Because it’s business that is going to get us out of the current rut and on the road back to prosperity. That’s why November’s edition of MT will be all about UK plc and what we’re doing right. ‘Britain: not broken but re-grouping.’ I hope Luke will approve.