Thursday 17 November 2011

Passport Application

In view of the Border Agency "Fiasco" that is currently doing the rounds of Westminster. Which came about when Home Secretary Theresa May agreed to relax passport checking which led to a huge number of passengers entering the country unchallenged. Potentially over ten million people entered without being checked in August alone!

This is the tale of an alleged letter that was included with a passport application. Yet at the same time it has that ironic ring of truth about it! I think its apocryphal but it made me chuckle anyway so I decided that I had to share it with you.

Dear Sir.
I'm in the process of renewing my passport but I am a total loss to understand or believe the hoops I am being asked to jump through. I have had three previous passports issued. But your Passport Office have no knowledge of my previous passports? How is it that the local library has a list of every book I borrowed sing 1984 and has my date of birth, address and telephone number. Yet, the Government Passport Office is still asking me where I was born and on what date?

How come that nice fellow who comes round every Thursday night with his DVD rentals van can tell me every film or video I have had out since he started his business up eleven years ago, yet your Passport Office still want me to remind you of my last three jobs, two of which were working for the government?

How come the T.V. detector van can tell if my T.V. is on, what channel I am watching and whether I have paid my licence or not. Yet if I win the government run lottery they have no idea that I have won or where I am and will keep the money if I fail to claim in good time.

You have my birth date on numerous files you hold on me, including the one with all the income tax forms I've ever filled in for the past 50-odd years. It's on my national health card, my driver's licence, on the last three passports I've had. As well as all those insufferable census forms that are done every ten years and the electoral registration forms I have to complete, by law, every time our lords and masters are up for re-election.

Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot to assist in the issuance of a new passport the same day. Or would you rather have us running all over the place like chickens with our heads cut off, then find some tosser to confirm that it's really me on the bloody picture - you know... the one where we're not allowed to smile in in case we look as if we are enjoying the process! I have to get someone 'important' to verify who I am -- you know, someone like my doctor...who, before he got his medical degree was from another country altogether.
I can't believe that the Passport Office sent me the passport application document to my house by mail, then ask me for my address. Well, I have to go now, because I have to go and get another copy of my birth certificate because you lost the last one!
PS We have managed to put a man on the moon in 1969 by apparently using all the computing power of a simple electronic calculator. The government have spent  our money on a new NHS computer system that does not work a £7bn project that is in MP speak "unworkable". I don't suppose that someone could do something about the piss poor passport service and buy them a box of paper clips or a stapler.

Yours sincerely, an Irate British Citizen.

PP Home Secretary Theresa May

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