Picture this – after waiting for what seems like an hour (probably in reality though only fifteen minutes, but of sheer neck-cricked Hell) you finally get from your seat in row 18 through the front door of a Jet2 plane and onto the tarmac into a packed shuttle bus.
Next, you’re waiting in an endless queue to enter the Leeds-Bradford Airport terminal, along with those who’ve also ‘enjoyed’ a four hour flight back from Heraklion on seats far less comfortable than even those on a National Express coach or a UK train.
Welcome Back to Broken Brexit Britain.
Now, don’t think that just because you’ve had your up-to-date, valid UK passport scanned by the masochistic, bizarrely still EU-loving, Greeks, as well as by Jet2 personnel at the departure gate (along with your self-printed or mobile downloaded Q-coded boarding card) that you’re going to be given the traditional illegal immigrants’ warm welcome, oh no. Not for you a blanket, sandwich and hot drink, dear UK taxpayer, on arrival into the loving arms of your homeland (and certainly no quick access to a free hotel or priority health care either). Honestly what were you thinking? Your ‘job’ is merely to pay for the government’s largesse to benefit seeking and largely young male Islamic invaders; complain and you’ll be accused of hate crimes or worse still of being of a ‘far-right’ persuasion (whatever that means).
Technology is wonderful, isn’t it? No, it F-well isn’t. You’re now going to be subjected to a 30 to 45 minute wait in a long, increasingly fractious, crocodile queue through Byzantine-barriered alleys just to have your passport given yet another scan and a half-hearted once over by a pleasant yet clearly bored (but at least seated or the Unions would be in uproar) immigration official. Heaven help you if you’re old or disabled, but too proud to put yourself forward for special ‘assistance’, or think that as a tracked bonafide UK citizen returning home from holiday that you’ll be treated better than cattle on the way to the abattoir.
Why, dear reader, isn’t it possible for the Greeks to email over a list of the passport holders they’ve just said ‘yasou’ to? Why can’t Jet2 do the same? All airlines are shit-hot at selling stuff in the air and still managing to bill your credit or debit card company almost immediately, but your own passport number, ‘photo and expiry date – are you living in fantasy land?
Now I’m not saying that immigration officials should be entirely dispensed with at the so-called UK Border in airports, but surely in this day and age it ought to be possible to pre-advise a small selection of unlucky travellers that they alone will be required to have their passports inspected on arrival and if they slip through without they will be tracked down, heavily fined and barred from further international travel? These unlucky few (on a typical UK budget airline flight) surely should be those travelling on any non-UK passport, those who have a criminal record, or those who are suspected terrorists (although in this government’s eyes, that probably includes us all, especially white indigenous Britons and even deluded Labour voters).
In short, why are we subjected to this (and our annoyance disregarded by ‘our betters’ who aren’t subjected to this ritual humiliation) wholly unnecessary and unwarranted hurdle to entering what used to be OUR own country?
I wonder what would happen if the entire passenger cohort of a Jet2 flight just rushed the immigration desks and piled straight into the luggage retrieval hall or airport exit? Somehow the technology that is apparently incapable of gauging if we’re undesirables would, I guarantee, manage to track down every UK passport holder and hold them to account for their heinous crime, whilst no doubt inexplicably failing to locate all those without UK passports.
Pissed off? You bet I am, but why don’t we ever make a fuss and instead just grumblingly join the queue like we’re hoping for a good citizen award?
Martin Rispin has had a career in many different sectors, most lately in the fields of English Tourism and Heritage based Urban Regeneration. He now lives, retired, in Kingston upon Hull.
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Yet another example of how technology doesn’t make things easier but is used against the interests of ordinary people.
Everything will get easier when we have to get permission to leave our houses and we are told precisely where we can go and what we can buy.
We have a low tech arsehole for a PM what he knows about technology you could write in very large print on a postage stamp.this dickhead is only concerned in how much tax he can squeeze out of us.He would be better off as a corpse.
It’s just not worth it. Flying in itself is hell, never mind the rest of it.