Passport Hell...
Ridiculous.
I want to renew my passport, and what a fucking palaver that has turned into. I NEED a new fucking passport because I am going Snowboarding in France next year, but it is a really annoying process you have to go through. I have summarised the journey I have taken to get this done below...
1. [Day 1] Go to the post office and get the forms. This is all well and good but when you have to stand in a queue for 15 minutes just to get a form it takes the piss.
2. Read the form and the instructions, Jesus fucking christ - can it be any more complicated??
3. [Day 2] Form completed only for me to realise that I had put in the wrong postcode as I have recently moved. For fucks sake. Had to queue up again during my lunch break for another 15 minutes to get another poxy form.
4. SECOND form duly completed.
5. Locate my passport at home. This took 8 seconds and is the fastest step in the process, it was in my box file under "P" for passports. Easy.
6. [Day 3] I went to the Post Office once again to get a passport picture, I noted that this machine issued "Passport Approved" photos! Yay, so thats cool then. I paid my £3.50 - £3.50!!?! for my photos and it took a couple of minutes waiting to print out. Cool so that's done...
7. Wait in the queue for a cashier, the queue was out of the door today!! Annoying because I can only do this during my lunch break so I have to fucking queue up - it pisses me off so much, especially when I am hungry. Grrrrr.
8. Got to the cashier who asked me if I want to pay and "Extra £7 for Express Checking" so I said yes and she started looking at my form and pictures and then said, "oooh dearie me, the people at the passport office wont accept that photo...", "why not?" I gruffly replied, "i'm not wearing a hat, I'm not wearing sunglasses, I'm not smiling, i'm centralised in the shot, its a blank background - whats wrong with it? Apparently it is unacceptable because there is a slight (by this I mean TINY) reflection on my glasses - FOR FUCKS SAKE!!!!
The Cashier tells me (although I know it is technically impossible) that the Government, in particular the passport office uses the pictures to scan our retinas! How can that be true?! you cant scan someones retinas from a photograph, that's ridiculous. I have never heard such utter bollocks. So between the cashier and her supervisor they both deemed the "Passport Approved" picture unacceptable. FOR FUCKS SAKE!!!!
They said I could go to Klick photo-processing and they can "digitally remove" the reflection, what a joke.
"Gimme the fucking forms" was my last retort before storming out of the post office.
9. Went to Klick photo processing, "Can you edit out these reflections?" the answer was obviously a no but we can do reflection-free photos for £3.50. Another £3.50 - For FUCKS SAKE!!!
I paid the money and had the picture taken and waited ever more for the printer to spit out the pics.
10 Dammit, it's time to go back to work, ANOTHER day has gone by with no passport renewal.
11. [Day 4] Went back to the fucking shithole cunt-fucking Post office and stood in a fucking queue for another 15-20 minutes waiting for these cunts to get their fingers out of their fucking arses. I handed in my forms and the new photographs. "Do you want express checking?" yes please take another fucking £7 off me you money grabbing bastards. The bitch behind the counter started reading through the forms, "ooh I notice you have filled in the section for a lost or stolen passport - YOU will have to re-do the form" FOR FUCKS SAKE!!!
I told this woman about how much fucking hassle I have had and that I am NOT going to leave this counter until my application was submitted. I also told her I am not queuing up again and I am not filling in the form again. She asked me to move to one side and complete the form and I refused. I stood my ground, fuck them. In the end she agreed to re-do the form for me and she started filling it in. Yes! at fucking last.
Finally, she was done (took her about 3 minutes of speed-writing) and I got the final shock... "that will be £49.00 please" - £49 for a fucking passport renewal plus £7 for photos - FOR FUCKS SAKE thats £56!!!
So I paid and it's all done now, I just have to wait THREE WEEKS for my new passport.
What a nightmare.
posted by AdZ @ 11:54 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Yeah man. The government can scan your Retinas from a photo - JesusFuckingChrist people will believe anything you say to them...
I also read about various baby photos that had been rejected for stupid reasons. Such as 'visable teeth', 'too smily' and 'face too shiny' were amoung some of the reasons! It's all down to a shit biometrics system. The thing does do some degree of face mapping in the pictures, and it stores the info in a chip under your photograph.
The problem is biometrics basically though. We're not advanced enough yet to use effective biometrics in mainstream society. Put it this way, if the system is 99.9% accurate, then that's still one in a thousand people that it doesn't identify correctly. When you think of the numer of thousands of people that will exit the country by plane, train, ferry, etc the number of failures render the system practically useless. In some cases, known terrorists could be let in, and innocent people identified as terrorists! And this is all based upon the fact that the system is ale to do 99.9% correctly, which it isn't! I can't remember the exact details for it's accuracy, but the last I hear it wasn't even above the 90% mark!
Also, as far as the babies are concerned, the ironic thing is that the Government say that something like 1000+ (again can't remember exact figure) babies goes missing every year, and they want to stop them exiting the country, sometimes bound for slavery, apparently. However, has nobody really accounted for the fact that most babies look the same anyway?
we do not need protection from terrorists, we need protection from the government.
Dont believe me? Well check out Infowars.com, prisonplanet.com and read stacks of evidence that supports this.
I thoroughly agree man!
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