No freedom in England: Man forced to take off t-shirt because it shows a cartoon gun!

LONDON, England - June 2, 2008 - Airport guards stopped a man boarding a plane - for wearing a Transformers t-shirt showing a cartoon gun.

Brad Jayakody, 30, was shocked when he was told to change his shirt if he wanted to catch his flight from Heathrow’s Terminal 5.

IT consultant Brad - on a British Airways trip with four colleagues to Dusseldorf, Germany - asked to see the security chief.

Jayakody thought the supervisor would be more rational about the situation, but he backed up the decision and threatened to arrest the Australian.

Jayakody said, "My mate set off the alarms and was searched. But then the guy told me to stop and said, ‘you cannot get on the plane because there is a gun on your T-shirt’."

The shirt has the Transformers film character Optimus Prime on the front.

Brad, of Bayswater, West London, added, "It’s a cartoon robot with a gun as an arm. What was I going to do, use the shirt to pretend I have a gun?

"I was flabbergasted. I thought the supervisor would come over and see sense, but he didn’t. After I changed he said if I changed back I would be arrested."

A spokesman for Heathrow operator BAA said, "If a t-shirt had a rude word or a bomb on it for example, a passenger may be asked to remove it. We are investigating what happened to see if it came under this category."

Last year, Gatwick guards made a woman hand over a beef sandwich before boarding and last week a PhD student was stopped for wearing a gun-shaped charm necklace at an airport in Canada.

Ed. Note:  When is enough, enough?  For how long will you allow these bureaucratic pencil-necked geeks to dictate how you live?  Will you never rise up and overthrow these tyrants?