It's All Our Fault, Isn't It?

[andyh4]

[quote user="Pierre ZFP"]

If the dunderheads who are waiting for passports can't be bothered to renew up to six months before expiry that's their bad luck

It's not always that easy.  It so happens that I haven't had a 3 week slot this year where I haven't had to use my passport and whilst getting back to the UK might not be a problem I would then be stuck when I needed to leave a few days after.  If I time it right and it's not held up too long I may be able to get it renewed in September.

It was so much easier when I could go to the British Embassy here in Luxembourg and get a renewal virtually on the spot.

 

[/quote]

I totally understand this having been in a similar situation in the past - and worse, travelling every weekend (Germany to France and back) and having to submit a passport for a visa where the turn around was 2-3 weeks. Solved that by travelling on my picture driving licence - but I did test it before I sent the passport off.

However I am reminded that you can legitimately have more than one UK passport. WE used to have salesman whose "area" covered Israel, Saudi Arabia and the USSR (it was a while ago) and he had 3 passports. The difficult thing was to remember which one to show at which border.

[idun]

So it isn't 'our' fault, according to the Daily Mail today. It is all the forreners who have been issued with british passports..........280,000 of them.

Now, maybe I am being particularly obtuse here, and that is quite possible........ but I thought that only british citizens were issued with british passports? Have I missed something?

[NormanH]

You have to read between the lines with the Daily Wail.

They are really trying to stir up indignation that so many 'foreigners' have been given British citizenship.

Their method is to create a sob story about a sympathetic 'real' Brits at the centre:

applicants described chaotic scenes inside the offices with some people in tears.

Claire

McKay spent two days frantically trying to obtain a passport for her

teenage daughter to go on holiday. ‘It is very traumatic, I have been

crying a lot,’ said the social worker. ‘I was very upset, but it was the

only way they would understand.’

No mention of course that those 'new' citizen may have less trivial reasons to require a passport than a simple holiday, but then this gutter rag specialises in manipulation in the guise of information.

[YCCMB]

And by implication, they hand 'em out like sweeties to all comers. The reality is, of course, that (just like in France) there's a five year residency requirement, a language requirement, a citizenship test....

[idun]

Unfortunately my father wants a copy of the Daily Mail every Saturday, for the tv page and he laps up the tosh it spouts. Me, I see the headlines and that is it and I have simply reported what I saw today.

[:D]

[YCCMB]

[quote user="andyh4"]

However I am reminded that you can legitimately have more than one UK passport. WE used to have salesman whose "area" covered Israel, Saudi Arabia and the USSR (it was a while ago) and he had 3 passports. The difficult thing was to remember which one to show at which border.[/quote]

I had two passports for donkey's years when I was travelling all the time for work. It simply wasn't possible to get visas, etc., in time without having a spare passport to use whilst the other one was away having the visa done. I did once have a slighty hairy moment in Algiers, when I had to visit the port authority and show my passport to gain admission. Only the passport I'd come in on was with the hotel reception....so I just showed the other one. Which was fine, until the security guy asked me how I'd got into Algeria as I didn't appear to have any entry stamp in my passport. So I explained I had two passports, and the other one was lodged with hotel reception. He didn't like that at all! Got away with it, but it was an awkward conversation.

[Théière]

Made me chuckle reading this thread, needed a chuckle this morning. No wonder the old passport office in London was Petty france!

Just to put posters minds at rest, although it may take 2 weeks or a bit longer to get your passport the UK government have made special arrangements so that parking fines and speeding tickets can be with you well inside that time, now it's down to revenue collection and you lot don't generate enough compared to the other income streams.

I loved the CCTV / I.D. card comment.  I don't object to CCTV except for the fact it isn't usable in court because the quality is so low res it's a fuzzy blob did something but could have been anyone, something happened but the whole system is a waste of money. 

I.D. cards, the design was to include too much data, all eggs in one basket,  so if you were mugged or lost it so much info would be available to intelligent thieves you would need a whole new I.D. you couldn't be you any more!  A basic I.D. card ok but we have mobiles and twitter/facebook so I.D. cards are really not needed there is so much of everyone out there in the cyber world and you could be tracked to around 6 feet which is why the police use mobile phone evidence so much more than CCTV.

[Sprogster]

What probably did not help either is that the UK government in

its wisdom decided that the passport issuing offices in the Channel Islands and

the Isle of Man would no longer be able to renew or issue British Island passports,

as this would be centralised to a UK mainland passport office. This was despite

the fact the passport offices in Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man had no

history of passport fraud and were paid for by the Island governments, so there

was no cost saving for the UK Treasury.