While it’s fairly well accepted now that joking about any sort of airport terrorism is a daft idea, it still seems a tad overkill to arrest someone for a Twitter comment, confiscate his laptop, iPhone and home computer. However that’s what happened to a Doncaster man who, frustrated with the airport’s closure in the snow, threatened to blow it up unless it was cleared in a week.

Any sort of airport related threat, particularly taking into account the last few months, isn’t the brightest thing in the world to write, but still, you’d imagine the police would have been able to work out pretty quickly that this was a poorly thought through joke. Maybe even pop round his house and explain just why it wasn’t the best idea. However questioning him for almost seven hours does seem a little over the top. Let alone taking into account that after he was released on bail, he was suspended from work pending an internal investigation and has been banned from Doncaster airport for life.

Obviously there needs to be some sort of common sense applied to the Terrorism Act and our right to freedom of speech. Surely for the Terrorism Act to work properly and for the police to be able to do their job they need the support of the public, and ridiculous over the top reactions such as this just ruin the credibility of both the police involved and the act itself.