It’s like the share price jumping when the CEO quits:
Airports running ‘better than usual’ in ‘embarrassing’ blow to Border Force strikes
So, we should cut their pay and fire a few, right?
It’s like the share price jumping when the CEO quits:
Airports running ‘better than usual’ in ‘embarrassing’ blow to Border Force strikes
So, we should cut their pay and fire a few, right?
I’ve just come through Gatwick passport control in nanoseconds. Not only that but the young servicemen standing in were smiling and wished me Merry Christmas. What a change from the usual sour-faced jobsworths.
@John: I bet when the novelty wears off, those squaddies will scowl with the best of them!
Julia,
I bet they won’t. They are doing a grand job and getting thanked by the travelling public for it.
The Border Farce have been exposed as well-paid, sour-faced jobsworths.
If they are doing a better job than the Border Force, can we now use the Armed forces to stem the flow of migrants into the country? They should be even better at that, as one of their roles is to prevent forceful invasion.
Border force could probably be more smiley, but the Home Office and their senior management are execrable so they get shit from the top as well as grumpy passengers. That whole Home Office sprawling mess of agencies has been not fit for purpose, probably for decades, and none of the Home Secretaries we’ve had in that time has ever been able to sort it out.
@Sam Vara
I could just imagine the army dealing with the flow of migrants, by meeting them on the beaches or having rescued them from little boats.
“Congratulations on entering the UK. You must be cold and thirsty. Here’s a nice cup of tea for you. Now we are going to take your fingerprints and DNA and put you on your onward transport to the destination of your choice. You can either go to Rwanda by joining the truck on the right or be returned to you home country (provided you have proof of citizenship) by joining the truck on the left. Hurry up the trucks are about to leave, and you flight will be taking off in a few hours.”
The flow of migrants would be gone by the end of the week.
I bet they can call speak English too.
It’s been a while since the last time I took a flight (and I’m in no hurry to do so again) but returning back through Heathrow or Gatwick I would amuse myself by seeing how long it took before I heard an English accent while walking through the “secure” areas and passport control.
Yes, before the trolls and “progressive” cunts try to cancel me for equating foreign accent with “shouldn’t be in a supposedly secure area” I know that not all foreigners are terrorists. But still, it is indicative of the state of this country that it is remarkably rare that my passport was examined by someone clearly born here.
s/call/all/
Honest, I can speaka da language senor!
@TG: ’…none of the Home Secretaries we’ve had in that time has ever been able to sort it out.’
Correction: ‘…none of the Home Secretaries we’ve had in that time has ever shown the slightest inclination of wanting to sort it out.’
Julia. Home Secretaries change. The Home Office remains the Home Office.
Was there a fiercesome Sergeant Major marching up and down the queue yelling
“Stand straight you ‘orrible little passengers !” ?
I used to work for a chemical company on a site threatened with a strike by the plant operators. People reminisced about the last strike: the young engineers and scientists celebrated all the overtime pay they made replacing the operators, the senior men reminisced less fondly because they didn’t get paid overtime. Ha ha. But above all they pointed out how much better the plants were operated. The meters don’t lie: the company was making more product.
This seemed interesting to me: the operators were typically not bolshie, lead-swinging British workmen (such as you did find among the skilled tradesmen) but decent chaps who always seemed to do a sensible, conscientious job. Nonetheless, replacing them temporarily with more intelligent, better educated employees shoved up production.
bloke in spain,
“Julia. Home Secretaries change. The Home Office remains the Home Office.”
Politicians have done a great job convincing people that it’s all about the mandarins. Yes Minister rather enforced this for decades. My experience working with the Home Office is that people did what they were told. Minister made a speech and they quickly got on with doing it. Their greatest sins were idleness and not being well-managed. Most people liked to not work. Most of the management overcomplicated things.
Politicians are generally vain. They’d rather be making a speech at a local school or opening some new building for a charity or posing in hi-viz at a business, than chairing a departmental meeting about why the email isn’t working (which has been having a major effect on productivity for months). Their excuse for failure is the mandarins, which is just bollocks. Firstly, I don’t believe them, and secondly, if they are getting in the way, why not just pay them to fuck off and hire a new permanent secretary who will do as he’s told?
You can either go to Rwanda …
Its been quite instructive watching lefties after the recent Supreme Court case claiming there won’t be many flights anyway, completely missing the point that the policy isn’t about how many we send, its that sending any amount will act as a deterrent to those coming.
It’s also seeing the lefties complaining about sending them to Rwanda because they don’t think it’s a suitable location, a tad colonial and racist, also the same people who screamed blue murder at Trumps shitholes comment
When did anyone last have “border force” eyes set on them when arriving at a UK airport? It’s been all automatic gates for years, two blokes with their knees up in a littl booth control 15-odd lanes of passengers.
“Border force” is there for those arriving with exotic passports or children and the 1 person in 100,000 who goes through the gates with an outstanding warrant.
Bi4R,
I’ve never used an e-passport gate, having either had a non-biometric passport or children. Given the queues at passport control during school holidays, I’m clearly not alone in this position.
A friend of ours worked as a regulatory analyst for Bell Telephone in Ontario in (I guess) the early ’80s. At the time, there was a significant waiting list to get a new land-line phone installed – maybe six months or more – and since land-line was all there was, people just suffered the inconvenience. The union work-force went on strike for more money / fewer hours / more benefits – the usual sort of stuff. All the non-union staff were given a week or two of training as installers, and sent out into the field (our friend was one of them). Three months into the strike, the installation backlog had been largely cleared, and the wait time for a new phone line was down to a week.
This afternoon I watched yet another repeat of the Top Gear Africa special. The boys drove through Rwanda, it looked fine to me.
Ok maybe the roads weren’t great but there must be a fair few civil engineers among the highly educated professionals bravely making the perilous trip from war-torn France who can provide the necessary expertise.
John, I remember that episode of Top Gear. Didn’t they comment that most of the infrastructure was being funded by the Chinese?
One thing about Africa now a days is that it is very heavily industrialised and metropolitan. So when you see charity adverts about women and children having to walk miles to get water and not getting any education you know they are living in the past. And pulling on the heart strings of the middle and upper class who live in their bubble.
is anyone surprised? Maybe the challenge for 2023 is to get all the political types to go on strike!