UK Border control - Inconsistency, poor service and the list goes on

Well I've meant to write about this one for a while! Ever since I first travelled to the UK as a student, I can recall on one hand the number of times I haven't had trouble of some kind crossing the borders. I've been a few places in my time, and I can't recall anywhere (yes even the US) that has such needlessly strict and inconsistent border security.

The whole saga started around July 2008, I had plans of bike racing and camping in the European summer, then starting a year of student exchange in the UK that Autumn - not too much of a biggie visa wise, a quick call to the UK embassy in oz ($10 flat fee no less though!), and it was revealed that I could apply for the visa in Vienna or Paris in  person - far easier than sending all the stuff to Canberra for 6 wks +! Besides It could not have been processed in time if I was going to race world champs on the bike and then make it to the UK.

Halfway through the summer though, things got a bit fishy - a few email, calls to both embassies, and even a visit to Vienna, I realised that these places had suddenly become like black holes - you could send your documents into them for an application, but no information would return out of them. Turned out that they also didn't take applications unless you resided in that country - contradicting the supposedly sound advice I paid for out of Canberra. Several years later, I found out that the whole UK Border agency / Forreign office / whoever was responsible, was in the process of being privatised for visa applications .

Unable to make sense of the situation where information was not freely given up, I chanced the border at the Eurostar terminal in Paris, knowing I'd be able to get a 6 month student visa there. Or so I thought! I got as far as having my passport stamped, but just as it was about to be handed over they questioned why I had 9 months worth of courses on my offer letter from Uni- I reiterated that It was my original intention to stay for 2 semesters worth of study, and that the only reason I didn't have the proper visa was that I had been fed a load of crap by the embassy in Canberra, and hey it's not every year you qualify to race at world champs is it? My finger prints were taken, and I was assured the consulate in Paris would process my application. With this, I set off, unsure of pretty much anything - I'd already had all my bikes shipped off to the UK and dropped off my rental.

Arriving at the address of the consulate, I found that it had not been there for sometime, I was given another address, and the search continued. At the supposed consulate I found that it was merely a place to submit visa applications for those in the country - It was little wonder then that my attempts to get in touch with them were unsuccessful! Distraught, I had uni doctor up 6 months worth of paperwork. Just in case I was barking up the wrong tree, I went and asked at the border what they'd need - apparently they wanted a full letter couriered over from the University! I retired for the night - it had been a pretty average day to say the least. Finding a hostel would be easy I thought , at least that would go my way. It didn't, and I travelled to 2 before I was successful.

The next day I took my chances printing an online version, and I was through. Happily I didn't pay for my attempts, as a fire in the Eurostar meant they were handing out replacement tickets and refunds more readily than an oversubscribed American commuter flight. Sadly though this is not where the trouble finished. Travelling to Belgium a few months later, I was taken aside at the border - my visa had been backdated 6 months rather than forward - rookie error on their behalf! After this hassle,  I wrote, explaining the whole lot to the home office in the UK, and even offered to come down and have the whole lot verified - no chance, If the good times were to continue, I'd be going home for christmas. This was far from straightforward, with my application returned for not signing it (after it head sat in the que for 3 weeks on someones desk no less, no phone call no nothing!), Getting it back, and a few weeks later, I find out my passport has made it's way back to the very office in London I had offered to visit! 7-8 weeks after returning home, I was on my way back to the UK.

18 months later, and I had my YMS visa in my hand, this time ready to go before leaving Oz. Entering though the same border in Paris, there was not a single problem! But that was only temporary - Some nasty prick in Manchester decided that my student visa (which I was clearly no longer using!) had not been verified properly in 09' by stamping it - clearly not my problem! Several months later, and one of his colleagues tells me that my current YMS visa is not verified properly since it never got stamped - talk about inconsistency - they were probably even colleagues! Somewhere between these two inconsistencies, I  was questioned about my work - the bloke reckoned that I was only allowed to work for 12/24 months on my visa - I called his bluff and asked for the proof - when you have had as much shite as I have you don't skim over the fine print! I was allowed through…. only if I was careful about how long I worked! I later looked at the legislation, and it was another case of this being true …. about 07/08' - once again the border security people are out of date!

So lets look at the list of blatant errors from the British Border Agency and Consulates:

• Canberra Consulate 08 - Advises that student visas can be applied for in-person anywhere - despite the process changing several moths before to outsourced processing, and only being done from the applicants home country or regional centre.
• Paris Sept 08 - Advised that I could apply for a visa at the consulate - it had moved, and definitely would not process my application due to the above outsourcing.
• Paris Sept 08 - My visa is stamped with the wrong year - making it expire 6 months prior to the date it's validated
• Aug 11' - I'm told I cant work for more than 12 months on my 2 yr visa - these conditions expired on the YMS visa ~ 3 years ago
•  Nov 11' the border people can't work out if visas are DEFINITELY supposed to be stamped or unstamped.

Clearly all these errors point to a few basic things that need to be verified. Border staff need better training on what is and isn't current legislation - particularly since this is the legislation that they enforce! Secondly - don't privatise a government function, and if it is done, at least make sure everyone is on the same page, so they don't give false information to applicants.

Finally, I thought we as Australians were part of the Commonwealth? I reckon the above is pretty excessive given we still have the Queen as our head of state!

As a postscript, a quick search of t'internet did not reveal too much - It appears that sometime in Feb 08' that visa applications started to be outsourced for the UK, but naturally the Border Agency has no information on this! I did however find this - seems i've got plenty of company!

Utes in the UK

Utes or Pick-up  trucks are traditionally thought of as an Australain / US cultural icon, however I have a sneaking suspicion that the UK is cottoning on - well at least the marketing people have cottoned on to the envy the average UK citizen has for their less spatially constrained english speaking counterparts.

Marketing Utes in Australia and the US is a pretty simple affair - it just needs some pretty decent power figures, and the thing will sell itself. In the UK, it would seem they are trying to sell a lifestyle:

• Ford are offering the Ranger - also offered in Australia - available in the UK as the 'Thunder' edition
• Nissan have the Navara - again the same as what is offered back home, but with an  'Outlaw' edition offered -
• Mitsubishi have marketed their L200 consumer ute as the L200 Warrior - what we in Australia call the Triton
• Toyota, as pretty much everywhere, have the Hilux, with the top model in the UK branded as 'Invincible'

So what are all these manufacturers getting at? It would seem that all these branding editions conjure up images of new world ruggedness - perhaps the marketing people got it right - all these special editions mentioned above are THE most expensive version of each respective vehicle - yet they are the most numerous on UK roads in terms of non-govt utility vehicles. Says a lot about people's aspirations in the UK I think!

English Society - drowning in a sea of charity and 'awareness'

English love charity - there is little questioning this, when you hear the sheer volume the topic occupies in general conversation. But just how far does this love extend? Doing a little digging - according to the charity commission there are 162,119 registered  charities in Just England and Wales at the time of writing. That is quite substantial for a population just shy of 60 million. Thats more than one charity per 400 people!

By contrast in Australia there are something like 10,200  registered in a population of 23 million (thats about one charity per 2300 people then). Interestingly the figures I have obtained for Australia were part of an article in The Age on the very crux of this post - surely there is a butt load of duplication going on if there are this many charities - surely there cannot be THAT many endemic causes out there? Happily the article also mentions the role of government - particularly that in many of the model societies of Northern Europe it is seen as the role of government to assume many of the roles typically catered for by charity elsewhere.

Sticking with the two nations above, it is interesting to read at The Guardian that Australia actually donates MORE to charity. Clearly then, there must  something going on with competition for awareness and donations between charities in Britain - potentially casuing people to donate smaller amounts when they do donate. With the national profile that charity holds among the people, It would nearly be inconceivable for a person NOT to donate to a charity when asked. I hypothesise then that the typical UK citizen donates to charity in the same manner one should eat when dieting 'often, but small'. Why the small donations then?  Charity is ingrained nature in the culture. Saying no to charity is one of the biggest faux pas on this tiny island.

I was recently asked at work to donate 10 pounds to sponsor a colleague - the majority of the other people in the office made rubbish excuses or donated pitiful amounts. Perhaps it is my Australian heritage, but i'd rather be honest, so i told the guy upfront that I simply didn't want to sponsor him. I think the whole office stopped and stared, you would have heard a pin drop. But that is the crux of it - with loads of charities floating about, there are far too many impromptu collections, which the population somewhat begrudgingly deposits pitiful amounts into.

Think you can get away from these in an anonymous environment? Take a walk onto any of the UK's high streets on any given day and there will be a 95% that you will run into a chugger. These people are crazy invasive, and really begs the question - if they can pay out of work students to hassle passer by's into coughing up a monthly direct debit donation, then how much money are charities which support these practices actually spending on the cause?

Monetary matters aside, charities are also there to lobby governments and raise awareness of issues. This is usually a fair point, but picture the thousands of charities jockeying for awareness among 162k of them. Sure raising awareness is always a good thing, but this could be achieved so much more efficiently if the interested parties did a simple search and found an existing, related charity to support. But then again, as mentioned in The Age article above, there usually are some pretty big egos involved! Namely the kind that feels obliged to dedicate a charity to someone they know who died of x,y,z illness. If only these people would stick to dedicating park benches!

So not only is charity questionably ineffective (in terms of awareness and finances) when their number per cause is proliferated, but there are other inefficiencies in the system. Namely gap years. Ask any English person who has attended university, and chances are they took one of these. Moreover, unlike their Australian counterparts, they probably took it in aid of charity. But is this really effective? I recently looked at joining an Engineering organisation which operated in the 3rd world with gap-year style projects  - mainly from what i had seen of it's achievements through friends in Australia. It's a pity for me to say this, but my local branch in the UK looks like it offers far less in real projects and looks more like a CV builder under the guise of a charity. From speaking with many of my peers it would seem this is normal - that there are indeed many charities like this that exist just for building CV's and for facilitating a year away from organised society under the guise of doing something positive.

Further to charity projects providing an opportunity for lost university age students to pilfer a year abroad, yet still build their cv, is the culture of volunteering in corporations. With corporate culture it seems short of having children, there is little lenience to those who have ambitions of additional time away from the desk. That is unless you do it for charity. It all makes sense to me now - hearing of how the English have conquered the outdoors, how people have rowed across oceans cycled the world or similar schemes on a much smaller scale - all in the aid of charity. Perhaps this is me being cynical, but i reckon a fair load of them are doing this as an excuse to get out of work. I mean really, the majority would probably be able to donate more cash if they stayed at work and donated the proceeds from the same time period. Perhaps it's also that British people feel social guilt for just doing an adventure for adventures sake?

So there is a take home message at the end of this one - if I die of mysterious causes please do not start a charity in my name, and should I ever decide to pack it in and go walkabout - I'll be doing it off my own batt. You might say i'm a scrooge, but one day, when i'm earning more, i might just donate a massive chunk of cash to a deserving mob - that ought cut through all the pesky admin costs!

What applies to business applies to life?

We all know by the sheer volume of DIY and property shows that have originated in the UK that there must be some thing of a knack for business and project management ingrained in the average citizen. Applying high levels of advanced planning to this kind of project usually pays dividends. Naturally English have thought to apply the same levels of diligence to other facets of life.

On favourite pastime of the English is to plan Holidays. Whether this is related to a sense of project management, or ingrained desire to leave cloudy Brittani for some sun remains to be seen. I'm not just talking about planning a holiday, I'm talking about planning a holiday to the max, all included in a nice package - complete with payment plan (should one chose). Thing is Brits book these package holidays that far out, that anything could happen in the mean time. The travel company could go bust. Their personal circumstances could preclude them being able to make the trip. etc. Naturally all this leads rather conveniently to another rubbish financial product - travel insurance - the kind that includes all that extra crap that covers these eventualities. So why do Brits do it? Why do they pay through the nose for all manner of questionably unnecessary holiday extras (when in all likeliness they are just going to get drunk at night and lie on the beach all day), then take out a ridiculously priced insurance policy on the whole shebang, and potentially ice it off by paying for it on personal finance. I reckon it has to be a desire to plan ones pursuits in life like a business - planning months or years ahead in business is common practise, and progress in business often comes with coughing up cash in regular payments. Perhaps on the one hand it looks like holidays in the sun is all they have to look forward to, or to brag to colleagues to!

So you don't believe me on all this holiday stuff - go and open a British tabloid (or even a flashier broadsheet) newspaper - these are loaded with holiday 'packages'. Funny thing about these holidays is that if the protagonists involved simply got educated on their destination rather than the deals, i'm sure they could snag even better offers on accommodation and activities. Furthermore a bit of freedom never hurt anyone - booking later, and booking activities/ accom when you use them may cost a little more, but also leaves more options open. Potentially it may even be cheaper given the opportunity to haggle with poorly occupied hotels.

Holidays are not the only thing English people like to plan as if they were running a business. As i have touched on before, they also like to purchase assets ina similar manner to businesses - in payments - also known as finance. Finance is not really a new concept to an Australian such as myself, Aussie Bogans have been maxing out mortgages and credit cards for decades - not to mention buying furniture on x months interest free terms. 
What is staggering by comparison is the manner in which English employ yet another rubbish financial product. I'll give two examples of acquaintances of mine. The first earns a reasonable salary for someone his age, and decided to treat himself to a new car, on finance of course. All and good i suppose, if it enables you to get to work reliably in order to earn money. Nope, he has a new performance car that cost about 10k - yet today he complains about social commitments to going out for dinner - but surely for a once a month event that is cheaper than the interest he pays per week !
Another ludicrous example of finance is yet another acquaintance of mine who intends to buy a 1k bicycle frame. on finance. over 2 years. Few things here - you would want to be bloody good to pay that much for a frame - I've represented my country in the sport, and by current steed which sees probably 5k miles a year cost 80 quid. On this form i would not dream of spending any more. Thing is this bloke hasn't turned a pedal in 2 years! Then he intends to put a race bike on Finance? They are usually obsolete / worn out within that pay off period!


Not only do English love to pay for things in instalments, they also like to 'pre-buy' - in a similar manner that a business does when setting up or launching a new product. The classic English example is buying a car prior to having a licence. Yepo i know someone in this boat too. He's just bought a near new car on finance - a few months prior to actually being able to drive it!

Whats the moral to all this? Don't run your life like a business. The key thing about buying things in advance and in payments in business is the capital cost of these things, and the fact that they are purchased in order to pay for themselves by value adding to the business. Critically anything bought with personal finance is likely to depreciate in value, and is not likely to earn it's keep. clearly then, business concepts should not be applied to individual lives! Perhaps this is also where it needs to begin when it comes to the debt crisis too?

Electric cars

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to go to an event run in aid of recruiting young people to the automotive industry on behalf of work. Initially I was amused that work would be supporting this (I work for a manufacturer of industrial diesel engines), given that the event promotes a ‘green’ electric car future – naturally I felt even odder driving a massive yank tank there in the middle of the UK countryside!

Seeing some of the other manufacturers there, it really is hilarious the state of affairs with electric cars – Peugeot were offering a ‘zero emission’ vehicle. Pitty is the way they package it; customers are able to swing into a dealership and borrow a gasoline powered car, should the electric car not be fit for purpose for a longer journey – essentially going against the whole idea in the first place! Hearing the sales bloke crack on about it to a rather educated skeptic who was having a good dig, it would seem that you would be spending a significant amount of time at that bloody dealership – the electric thing is targeted at commuters who have a significant amount of time during the day to charge the car at work.

Nissan was also there with an electric car – with a claimed range of 100 miles. The guy selling the thing clearly had a massive chip on his shoulder – accelerating the thing madly in front of people – so electric cars produce peak torque from the word go? All well and good that is – until it comes to battery life! Yep the guy ran it flat and had to plug it into a diesel generator for several hours in order just to make it home! BUT had he had a diesel engine in the car itself, it could have been running for a mere fraction of that time, and with a fraction of the transmission losses! Thing is too, in the UK market, these things would most likely be charged from the national grid – which is largely coal fired. Not really an improvement over a light duty internal combustion engine given the the compromises.!

This all got me thinking, so I did a bit of research on Peugeot’s offering – the iOn – offered new for a shade over 33k GBP with a 93 mile tank range. Interestingly you can score yourself a 207 wagon for a shade over 13k that has a diesel donk capable of 67 combined MPG – I’d be taking the up front saving and banking on that – particularly with 800 mile or so tanks! Don’t even get me started on the energy or materials required to make either of them – I’m pretty sure the conventional car uses a ton less energy and rare earth metals to manufacture.  

Overall I think this excitement over electric cars as a solution to commuting raises a very fundamental issue – the massive trend in society towards commuting. Fundamentally if resources on this planet are to be conserved this is one of the first places to look! People should not be so hung up as to where they live – driving hours per day for work to enjoy so called ‘lifestyle’ benefits is a joke – can anyone seriously enjoy these benefits during the week when they are working massive hours, and then stressing themselves driving back in the evening?

Similarly, in this day and age it is lunacy that employers in specialized industries insisit on the ‘bums on seats’ mentality – imagine if those with family lives already setup away from their new employer do not necessarily want to drive to work everyday – well it’s here folks – in most parts of the civilized world internet is now fast enough to effectively enable this – with the ability to dial into meetings, and sharing data. If we are to improve our carbon footprint – why are countries such as Australia not supporting the rollout of high-speed broadband. This nicely brings me to my next point of capital investment.

Another reason why commuting culture is so damn prevalent is the lack of viable alternatives – in countries like Australia there are no regional railways, or any other suitable transport networks to travel long distance apart from the car for commuting – In Britain it is a similar problem – even with ridiculous fuel prices, it is often cheaper to drive than take the non-subsidized public transport. What needs to happen to get public transport up and rolling is capital investment in infrastructure, and long- term government subsidized fares  It works in the rest of continental Europe, but of course Business is king in Britain, so the public naturally gets a short tax break, and otherwise raped.

Of course the best solution must be a bicycle or walking – no emissions, and a bit of exercise to boot. I’ll keep riding mine – It takes less time than the train to cover 30 miles per way, it’s less stressful than the car, and it means I can eat whatever I like. Now I just have to wait for my ankle to recover so I can start doing it again!

So for starting on electric cars, I have ended up quite a while off. In essence the very problem these things set out to solve, are already technologically solved – what needs to happen is a cultural and political shift to crack down on car commuting, to ensure that the alternatives become reasonable and culturally acceptable.

Uk society – The price of complacent consumerism

Having spent the last week purchasing a number of things, it has brought forward the issue of price discrepancy in the UK. Now classically the UK has always had the 'high street price' for everything, as opposed to internet / second hand / stolen car boot stereotype - thing is this stereotype is still there, but there are other even nastier price discrepancies. I guess the one I experienced last week (but fortunately didn’t pay) was the price for not doing ones research:

1.  Few tools at the LBS (local bike shop) - internet price £19 + 9 - upon rocking up at the till £23 + 11 - they claim that they have separate 'internet' and 'bricks and mortar' prices in order to pay overheads. Fair play, but they also offer a price-matching service - which essentially means the onus is on the customer to highlight this discrepancy to them.
2. 10 mins later, a few bits of camping gear at Decathlon - 3 items, all heavily discounted. The guy rings it up at retail - and was not too happy when i told him what it was all discounted, and about 40% cheaper. And its not the first time this has happened at Decathlon for me!
3. A few days later i was getting quotes for a car service - I was quoted £185 by the manufacturer, and found my local dealer wanted to charge £320, and was surprised when i told them they were dreaming

So the lesson from those 3 above -always check the market / listed value of items when doing anything involving spending your own cash in the UK. Those are a few personal examples, but how far does the price discrepancy thing go in the UK?

Cafe's seem to love charging separate prices for eat-in and take-away items – siilar to the bike shop example. This is only of the order of 10%, so their reasoning of paying for overheads is perhaps a little weak. The only other i can think of is perhaps limited space, and paying for the luxury - although places that are not limited by it still have the split pricing - perhaps this is where it originated, then it became culturally accepted and here we are. Cafe's also love to discriminate with pricing when it comes to location. The same chain cafe will charge nearly twice the price at a train station in the UK as it would elsewhere - but then again the UK does have a major obsession with convenience (and associated charges).

Purchasing a car of late, the classic eat-in / take out style discrepancy rasied it's head again - I visited several cars that were £500-1000 cheaper on the net as they were on the lot. These were not expensive cars either - at £3-5 k, that discrepancy makes up a fair saving. Thing was, since i had come in as an internet customer, most of them were happy to disclose the 'actual' selling prices of the other cars on the lot, as opposed to the listed price. It must be an idiot who pays list price at these places. Same thing happened when i was looking at cameras – a Mamiya 7 with lens was advertised at £600-800 depending on condition. I walked in and casually asked about one, and was told that i would be £1400 for any in stock. Needless to say nicholas camera is a massive rip-off.

Naturally with material goods showing such a massive financial disparity, the same could be assumed for financial products - and you would be right. I think this is perhaps one of the few facets of the market that consumers here have clued up to - and now big business is on the bandwagon with a mass influx of comparison websites - these things are absolutely insidious, and are closely related to rubish financial products / ad campaigns i have written about on here before. One of the greatest ironies here is that the general British population seems chuffed that they can save £10 on their car insurance through a comparison website – yet be bled dry by shifty retailers on material purchase - all because they have not done their research.

I have written in the past that the Australian economy has suffered from being closed to competition - but i now am convinced that the British market is suffering the opposite problem - the market is flooded, and it takes a lot of consumer awareness to pay the appropriate price here. Now i find myself yearning for a regulated market like France, Switzerland or Germany. It's a funny sensation in these countries, i've even bought vanilla slice for 7.50 CHF and not felt ripped off - i'd probably feel robbed if i paid that in the UK - but that’s the joys of a 'free' economy. 

As a postscript, I picked my car up from it's service yesterday, where i was told the clutch pedal needed replacing for  £150 (the source of the problem is actually a 50p bushing), and that the cambelt would need changing (£360), despite being only 95k miles into it's 144k mile service life. There were a few more sus charges i avoided, but hey I work in the Automotive design industry - what would the average punter do?

Uk Society - Scrap value

It would seem in the consumer world in the UK at present everything is gifted with an ultimate value - scrap value. In ordinary times perhaps this would not be significant, however at present it’s a fortune.  

One poignant example is that of cars – when a car reaches a certain age it would seem that the average English person would rather weigh up a vehicles value in pure scrap terms – if the scrap price is higher than the cost of repair or selling the car, you can bet that they will be weighing it in ASAP for scrap, and if not the value they are after? Simply an improvement on what the scrap man was offering. You could say i was somewhat snookered into this when my trusty 106 quit on me with a dropped rod (and a small fire) a few months back, but i digress. 

 

While the automotive sector is the main focus of scrapping, it is not just limited to that though. Gold is also high on the scrap list – with gold shops aplenty offering to buy items on weight. I suspect this however is a sign of the times along with pay-day loans more than anything though!

Not only is scrap limited to high value or high volume metals. The other day i had the cassette changed on my road bike at a shop – the guy was most excited that he would not only receive proceeds for fixing my bike, but also the proceeds for cashing the cassette in for it’s scrap value.

It would then seem that the scrap man can be seen as ridding the world of all its nasty leftover evils. Not so it would seem when you consider what else seems to get thrown through the UK’s scrap recycling system. All manner of public amenities seem to be stolen and put through it, including manhole covers and railway cables. The latter first came to my attention with a poster while on the train one morning. 

So the scrap man is the omnipresent remover of all evil, and the great market yardstick in the UK, but how would this place survive without him? The outer Hebridies in Northern Scotland provide a clue to this – there all manner of things are left to rot in fields after they have outlived their economic lives. I suspect though in such a cut throat economy that the cost of collection has traditionaly outweighed  the value of these items. Yes, sadly the mass obsession with scrap is an economic one, and a reflection on the countries deep-rooted capitalism and class structure, rather than one on environmentalism, with the current interest due to high scrap value and a dead economy. If I was a budding scrap  enthusiast,  I’d be setting up business in the outer Hebs.