Monday, September 08, 2008

What's wrong at the UK Border Agency?

Interesting figures have been released by Liam Byrne in a Parliamentary answer that previously just had a holding answer. The Home Office was questioned about the number of complaints it and its agencies receieved.

Of particular note was the UK Border Agency which seemed to have a massive spike in complaints received in a category the Government calls "service delivery" between 2003 and 2004 and it's stayed up there ever since.


I wonder what is so drastically wrong at the agency to be generating so many complaints? What happened in 2003-04 to cause the spike? More importantly why has it not been fixed?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

How about this? My girlfriend, an American living in France, was refused entry because, in trying to convince them she would be supported by me over here, I "showed" that I would be an incentive for her to stay longer than the visa period.

silas said...

Or when flying from Luton to Paris to see Rage Against The Machine, the knob jockey on the "security" check desk objected to my girlfriend's "oh for goodness sake" (after being asked to take her shoes off for the third time) by saying "any more of that and I can deny you entry".

There are now thousands of little jobsworth cunts, sat at border control thoroughly enjoying their bit of power, who can claim that they're doing whatever the fuck it is they're doing because it's in the interests of "national security".

I'd not be in the least surprised if there was a similar increase in complaints about Council "officials" - who can now take an extreme interest in your personal life without any real justification.

And it hasn't been fixed because the Government have absolutely no interest whatsoever in stopping the intrusions and the petty bureaucracy: they were the ones who introduced it.

YMMV

Anonymous said...

I have travelled to Belgium twice recently and my impression of the UK Border personnel in Brussels is of typical civil service impoliteness and dubious/ cursory checking of passports.. Too much chat between them and the third senior man who sits between them.

A degree of civility to passengers -especially those who pay them-would be welcomed

JH

Anonymous said...

the main problem for the home-grown punters is resources. Too few "petits foncionaires" sitting swiping in passports. Example 3 jobsworths to swipe the passports of 4 737's landed within 5 minues of each other, more than 600 people who all queue meekly in snake barriers. Complain and they slow it up, and then they blame the airport for landing too many aircraft at the same time. I am told Tony boy thought this one up by the fireside one evening just after 7/7. Solidarity with USA I believe, not to make dubbya look too stupid. Much easier and cheaper just to change foreign policy to something more representative of the feelings of the country. We and the USA I believe are the only countries doing the swipe in and swipe out. I have started to email-complain to my MP every time I have to wait for more than 5 minutes. Longest wait so far was 30 minutes. I would urge others to do the same. Of course you know why they store all this pretty useless information? Millions of names of the tatooed unwashed coming in from Benidorm? so that they can award a multi-million pound contract to one of the government chums, who then is going to download it on a disk and lose it. Keeps the media in jobs. So you see there is reason to the apparent madness.

Anonymous said...

YMMV confuses airport security personnel with UKBA. Airport Security (i.e. the people who check you over before you go airside) is nothing to do with UKBA. 11:58 calls refers to 'Jobs Worths'. Politeness is a two way thing and UKBA staff and others, wherever anyone works, should not be generalised with such sweeping soundbyte statements. I can also tell you staff do not deliberately slow up passengers as 11:58 suggests, the sooner they can get rid of them the happier they are. Silas on here refers to 'jobsworths cunts' and then whines about complaints...perhaps he should look at his own attitude.

Anonymous said...

This agency is a joke. My son was denied access even though he had over 10,000 pounds with him - and they said he didn't have enough money. Also he was visiting a friend who he met on the Internet - he was denied access simply because he was visiting someone he has never met. How bizarre - what about penpals in the old days.

I would NEVER recommend that any under 25 person travelling by themselves EVER goes to the UK for a holiday.

Anonymous said...

A friend of mine flew out from Malaysia to visit and was denied entry. Humiliated in handcuffs, brought to tears, treated like a criminal, degraded, all because she was Malaysian, and these little Hitlers want to use there powers...

They answer to the UK Borders Agency Complaints Team, well, you don't need to be a genius to figure out they won't do anything against the Uk Borders Immigration Officers, they'll just stand 100% behind anything they do. They can treat people how they want and are unaswerable to anybody...