Peter Rhodes on a new passport, a useful badge and the brazen Brexit bashers
Having been told my new passport would take six or ten weeks to arrive, I was delighted when it dropped through the letter box just 15 days after I applied. Is this a record?
Those 15 days produced a little blizzard of emails from the Passport Office. In quick succession I received the following missives: Send us your old passport, Old passport received, Passport application approved, Your new passport has been printed, Sign your passport.
This glut of information goes some way to explaining why about five per cent of the world’s generating power is now gobbled up by the internet.
Anyway, I’m now the proud owner of a dark-blue British Passport which for some reason carries three ghastly photos of my face, all apparently taken after death.
And how strange that a system which whizzes your passport to you in just 15 days produces a passport issued in the name of “Her Britannic Majesty.” Maybe they’re using up old stock.
I complained a few days ago about the fad of employees being urged to declare their preferred pronouns (he/him/his” etc) when dealing with the public.
In the meantime, I propose a citizen’s lapel badge, to be worn when dealing with authority or entering shops and restaurants.
On it you would declare how you’d like to be addressed (sir, madam, mate, squire, boss, darlin’, gorgeous, etc).
If nothing else it would save us from today’s universal “you guys” which greatly grates.
A reader asks darkly why the mainstream media made no mention of the “secret conference” to drag Britain back into the EU. Ah, yes.
That would be the secret conference held at Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire, on February 9-10, attended by Michael Gove, Peter Mandelson and others, with the theme “How can we make Brexit work better with our neighbours in Europe?”
This meeting was a secret shared with only 60 million Brits.
It would be less worrying if this meeting really had been held in secret.
The fact that it was so well known, and so comprehensively reported, shows how brazen the enemies of Brexit have become.
But let us hear them out. No-one ever claimed the Brexit agreement was perfect. If it can be improved, why not?
Let’s not confuse tweaking with treason.
