StdDev
03-13-08, 07:49 PM
Dear Minister,
I am in the process of renewing my passport, and am amazed at the obstacles your servants put before me and the hoops I am being asked to jump through. Again.
How is it that young Ali down the road at Speciality TV Stores has my address and telephone number and knows that I've been renting a TV from him since 1990, and yet with this, my application for a fifth ten year passport, your Department is again asking me where I was born and on what date?
How is it that the nice Jamaican guy who comes round every week with his DVD rentals van can tell me every film or video I have rented since he started his business sixteen years ago, yet your Department again want me to remind you of my last three jobs, two of which were with contractors working for the previous government? Surely all you have to do is type in my national insurance number somewhere in your all encompassing computer network and up I shall pop. Oh, I forgot. That number is not unique is it? Damn!
You have my date of birth on every one of the numerous files you hold on me, including the one with all the income tax forms I've filed for the past 40 or so years. It's on my national insurance card, my driver's licence, on the last four passports I've had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I've had to fill out before being allowed off all the planes and boats over the last 40 years, and of course all those intrusive ten yearly census forms and electoral registration forms I have had to complete, by law, every time you bl**dy politicians are up for re-election.
Do you people do this by hand?
Would somebody in that big bl**dy bureaucracy please take note, once and for all, that I was born in Ealing on the 15th of May 1953, my mother's name is Joan, her maiden name was Smith, my father's name is John, and I'd be absolutely astounded if that ever changed between now and the day I die!
I do apologise for the outburst, Minister, as I'm not sure I'm myself this morning, and its pretty obvious that you don't know either. But between you and me, I have simply had enough! You send the application to my house, yet on the form you ask me for my address. What is going on? Do you have a gang of idiots working for you? Don't answer that. Look at my damn picture. Do I look like Bin Laden? I don't want to overthrow anybody, let alone start another thousand year Reich, for God's sake! I just want to go on holiday for a while, sit on a sunny beach, drink a few beers and watch the world go by if thats alright with you lot.
I'll sign off now, because I have to go to back to London and buy yet another copy of my birth certificate because your lot managed to lose the last one I sent, even though you still have a photocopy "for your records" from ten years ago.
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? But I suppose that'd be too damned easy and sensible.
You'd rather have us running all over the place playing silly b#ggers, then ask someone who knows me to confirm that it's really me on that special cut to exact size photograph where we're not allowed to smile. We don't smile anyway. Why? Because we're all totally p****d off, thats why! And how do YOU know whether or not the guy I get to sign for me knows me anyway?? Some security check, eh?
I served in the armed forces for twenty two years, including seven years at the Ministry of Defence in London.
I have signed the Official Secrets Act no fewer than eight times.
I have had security clearances allowing me to sit in various meetings where the Secretary for Defence was being briefed on the first Gulf War, and I have been doing voluntary work for the British Red Cross ever since I left the Armed Forces- oops, sorry, Armed Services.
However, you still want me to get someone "important" to verify who I am.
You know, someone like my local GP, who has never met me before in his life, and who, before he got his medical degree last July WAS LIVING IN PAKISTAN...
Yours sincerely,
An Irate British Citizen.
http://www.rcmf.co.uk/4um/Smileys/live/uk.gif
https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/cia-museum/spy-fi-archives/graphics/bowler_hat.jpg
I am in the process of renewing my passport, and am amazed at the obstacles your servants put before me and the hoops I am being asked to jump through. Again.
How is it that young Ali down the road at Speciality TV Stores has my address and telephone number and knows that I've been renting a TV from him since 1990, and yet with this, my application for a fifth ten year passport, your Department is again asking me where I was born and on what date?
How is it that the nice Jamaican guy who comes round every week with his DVD rentals van can tell me every film or video I have rented since he started his business sixteen years ago, yet your Department again want me to remind you of my last three jobs, two of which were with contractors working for the previous government? Surely all you have to do is type in my national insurance number somewhere in your all encompassing computer network and up I shall pop. Oh, I forgot. That number is not unique is it? Damn!
You have my date of birth on every one of the numerous files you hold on me, including the one with all the income tax forms I've filed for the past 40 or so years. It's on my national insurance card, my driver's licence, on the last four passports I've had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I've had to fill out before being allowed off all the planes and boats over the last 40 years, and of course all those intrusive ten yearly census forms and electoral registration forms I have had to complete, by law, every time you bl**dy politicians are up for re-election.
Do you people do this by hand?
Would somebody in that big bl**dy bureaucracy please take note, once and for all, that I was born in Ealing on the 15th of May 1953, my mother's name is Joan, her maiden name was Smith, my father's name is John, and I'd be absolutely astounded if that ever changed between now and the day I die!
I do apologise for the outburst, Minister, as I'm not sure I'm myself this morning, and its pretty obvious that you don't know either. But between you and me, I have simply had enough! You send the application to my house, yet on the form you ask me for my address. What is going on? Do you have a gang of idiots working for you? Don't answer that. Look at my damn picture. Do I look like Bin Laden? I don't want to overthrow anybody, let alone start another thousand year Reich, for God's sake! I just want to go on holiday for a while, sit on a sunny beach, drink a few beers and watch the world go by if thats alright with you lot.
I'll sign off now, because I have to go to back to London and buy yet another copy of my birth certificate because your lot managed to lose the last one I sent, even though you still have a photocopy "for your records" from ten years ago.
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? But I suppose that'd be too damned easy and sensible.
You'd rather have us running all over the place playing silly b#ggers, then ask someone who knows me to confirm that it's really me on that special cut to exact size photograph where we're not allowed to smile. We don't smile anyway. Why? Because we're all totally p****d off, thats why! And how do YOU know whether or not the guy I get to sign for me knows me anyway?? Some security check, eh?
I served in the armed forces for twenty two years, including seven years at the Ministry of Defence in London.
I have signed the Official Secrets Act no fewer than eight times.
I have had security clearances allowing me to sit in various meetings where the Secretary for Defence was being briefed on the first Gulf War, and I have been doing voluntary work for the British Red Cross ever since I left the Armed Forces- oops, sorry, Armed Services.
However, you still want me to get someone "important" to verify who I am.
You know, someone like my local GP, who has never met me before in his life, and who, before he got his medical degree last July WAS LIVING IN PAKISTAN...
Yours sincerely,
An Irate British Citizen.
http://www.rcmf.co.uk/4um/Smileys/live/uk.gif
https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/cia-museum/spy-fi-archives/graphics/bowler_hat.jpg