The portable man cave is being dismantled and packed ready for transport back to the UK. Tomorrow, I fly from Chongqing to Hong Kong and then to Manchester. Very familiar with this journey, I know on the way out of China and through Hong Kong I can expect to be processed by smart young men and women in uniforms. They will be polite and undemonstrative, yet, simultaneously, stern.
Then I will arrive in Manchester to be greeted by UK Border Force operatives in purple tabards, who I will hear long before I see them as they shout at lines of passengers pointing them to the correct queues. Many of the women will be wearing hijabs and, I strongly suspect, while they may well be UK citizens, have only recently acquired this status; such will be the strength of their accents. In contrast, all the operatives in China and Hong Kong will be of Chinese descent.
Leaving China I will be in no doubt which queue to join at immigration; it will have ‘Foreigners’ emblazoned above it. No sensitivities about who is ‘one of us’ and who is not here. Mind you, we Brits will soon have our own queue at UK airports. As the caliphate tightens its grip on our country, they will probably introduce a lane for ‘Infidels’. But perhaps I should not give Sir Keir Starmer – and avid readers of TNC – any ideas.
Our immigration bods proper, if I am called to present my passport or our laughable ‘e-gates’ malfunction again, feel obliged to ask me where I have come from. I suppose it is easier on the beaches in the Southeast of England as everyone stepping off a large inflatable will have come from France and will, long since, have discarded their passports. No need for such formalities before thrusting a hot beverage and a dry blanket into their hands, and loading them onto whichever hotel shuttle bus awaits them. One could express a sense of injustice. But that, apparently, is racist, far-right, intolerant and unwelcoming. It can lead to a visit by your local constabulary and a spell in the nick.
‘e’ for ‘every effing time!’
Regarding e-gates, what a disaster ours are wherever they have been installed. For decades my wife and I and some of our kids have frequent entry rights into Hong Kong. This means, if you’re a frequent flier, or you have a certain number of entry stamps on your passport, you present it at an office in the airport where they fingerprint you, put a sticker on the back of your passport and you are in and out of Hong Kong in less than 30 seconds at a special e-gate; a proper functioning one.
Taiwan introduced e-gates for exit years ago and your passport barely touches the screen, the gate opens, and you are airside. Many European countries have them now and, while the ones in Italy where I go several times a year are not the best, anything is better than the ones in the UK.
For a start there is our crap passports, including the new ones. The glossy information page is so flimsy that after a few uses it folds and obscures the numbers at the foot which need to be scanned. This leads to all sorts of efforts to keep the page flat. But that involves putting a finger between the page and the scanner, which it doesn’t like.
I have a terrible admission to make to readers of TNC, when entering the UK I exploit my European citizen status and use my Irish passport. The Irish passport has a rigid information page and slides easily, every time, onto the scanner. But even then, it does not always work. The usual solution by the nearest operative – delivered in a scornful tone – is to “take off your glasses, Sir”, even though wearing glasses has bugger all to do with the way the scanners work which look for the dimensions of your head and other features. I prove this scientifically each time by removing them, to no avail.
Next, you are invited to join a lengthening queue where your passport – after being asked where you came from – is checked manually. Not a warm beverage in sight. Then the ultimate joke – and check this one yourself and tell me if I am wrong – you walk past a bank of people behind smoked glass who are staring intently at screens. If you get a glance of what they are doing from the side, you’ll see that on their screens are lots of faces; the faces of the people who are being scanned at the so-called ‘e-gates’. The system is not ‘e’ at all, it still requires someone to press a button and open the gate if the scan confirms who you are.
As they say round my way “‘e’ by gum!”
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
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Good article Roger as you said you do not want to give our extremely shit leader Starmer any ideas regarding infidel lanes as he only can handle one thought at a time two would cause serious exertion of the temporal matter and drive him more insane than he is already.
This perceptive and satirical article points up so well the absurd irony, utter incompetence and insulting officiousness that characterise much of the present day administration of our degraded home country.
the proverbial Q, same sit’n in Canaduh, if starmer is so gawdawful, why did enough of you vote for him?
THAT is the issue. THAT is the cause. not starmer. starmer is doing what starmers do, and by voting for it by the millions the message is sent and received ‘please do your thing we did our part’.