IT WAS not horror or panic that marked reactions in the wake of the alleged plot to blow up transatlantic aircraft. Instead, it was scepticism.

As writer and broadcaster Andrew Collins put it on his blog Where did it all go right?: “My brother, the policeman, will kill me for writing this, but whenever a terror plot is foiled ... I can't help thinking, well, I could say that I foiled a terror plot this morning. How would you know if I hadn't?

“You've got a beleaguered government, who, whether you support them or not, are definitely in need of a boost. And the foiling of dastardly plots makes everyone look good. It also makes us all terribly grateful.”

On the BBC’s Have your say forum, the top-rated comment was by one John Byng: “Funny how they know there's a threat that they've been monitoring for months and yet they have a scatter-gun approach in disrupting every airport.

“The tactics seem more a ploy to keep the public in fear rather than a genuine attempt to stop an atrocity.

“I bet that no-one from the handful arrested will be charged.”

Of the nearly 900 people arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 since the September 11 attacks in America five years ago, almost 500 have been released without charge. Just 23 have been convicted.

In the Independent, the letter writer Damian McCarthy of Temple, central London, criticised the “hype and spin” and “terrorism porn” surrounding the alleged plot. “No chemical or bomb making equipment has been found,” he said.

And in today’s Guardian, the scepticism is still going strong. Munir Kahn, a moderate Muslim of Luton who ended his 20-year Labour party membership to join the Lib Dems, branded the clamp-down “a cover-up because of what's going on in Lebanon.

"When you turn on the TV you see innocent people getting killed,” he told the paper. “This distracts from that."

The scepticism should be no surprise. The government claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which have never been found.

Police said Jean Charles de Menezes, the innocent Brazilian shot dead by police who mistook him for a suicide bomber, wore a bulky jacket and jumped over ticket gates when ordered to halt. But leaked inquiry papers said he strolled into Stockwell Tube station and even picked up a newspaper.

And then there was botched raid on a house in Forest Gate, east London, after a tip-off of a chemical bomb. They found nothing.

Will there be something this time?