I wonder if this is a Heathrow issue? There were no queues at Manchester last Friday afternoon, with a large number of flights coming in.

It is a fact that queuing at airport passport / immigration checks can and does allow people to form an initial impression of a country and its efficiency. I do wonder sometimes at the amount a government spends advertising the country to tourists and investors, but fail to address the things that actually stick in peoples' minds, such as immigration queues.

Until they built a new lounge for onward passengers, I avoided going to New Zealand via LA, as LAX insisted on immigration even though we were only staying in the airport! It is better now, and I no longer bad mouth California when discussing airports. (At the same time, Arnie was on adverts over here saying what a wonderful place it was, resulting in me shouting at the telly to ask him to sort out the jobsworth buggers at LAX....)

It's the little things that count... And the unacceptable situation at Heathrow is embarrassing for us, unacceptable for our visitors.