I am a suspected terrorist. My rucksack contains potentially explosive materials. I may look small and inoffensive but it is a cunning disguise contrived to deceive and beguile and it fails every time. In other words I am about to board a plane and I am carrying a make-up bag with a random selection of slightly grubby cosmetics.

Oh the shame of having my Chanel mascara confiscated at the security check! “I know” says the young woman quite sympathetically, as she drops the black and gold tube into a bin, “it is annoying”.

Annoying! That tube cost me £20. I fume and bluster all the way to Schipol. And what makes it worse is that I know I am being petty. But petty regulations bring out the barely suppressed adolescent in me. I am suffering a sudden flashback to my teenage years when I kicked against the mindless tyranny of pointless school rules.

OK, so my anger should be directed against the fanatics who ( we are told) would seek to squeeze part of a bomb into a mascara tube or a bottle of shampoo. And it is true, I would rather be body searched than blown up in mid air.

But I do not think it irrational to be angry at government regulations which seek to remind us how lucky we are they are looking after us. When they have made the world more dangerous by their actions. It is particularly hard to stomach this kind of double speak in the week after our Defence Secretary John Reid lectured Muslim leaders, warning them to look out for potential terrorists among their young people. He made a virtue of such hypocrisy speaking to the Labour Party Conference.

“It’s not Muslims versus the rest of us,” he said. “It’s evil terrorists on one side against all civilised people on the other.”

Check out John Reid’s voting record on www.theyworkforyou.com (very strongly for ID cards, foundation hospitals, tuition fees, anti-terrorist laws and very strongly for the Iraq war)

What John Reid doesn’t acknowledge is that Blair and Bush have conspired to make suspect terrorists of us all. Petty it may be, but when we are frisked at security we must accept that we are now all guilty until proved innocent.

With that in mind, I am off to pack my bag for a flight to Prague tomorrow. At least they won’t need to worry about my mascara.