How the blazes can it cost £72 to renew a passport? FFS, it’s only a piece of paper with an RFID chip stamped into it.

Could be worse

http://www.merlincycles.co.uk/?fn=product&productId=1709&categoryId=159

😆

Beat me to it Bob!

I nearly choked when I saw it!

How the blazes can it cost £72 to renew a passport?

That works out at a bargintastic £7.20 per year.

holy shit, how much (for the road groupset)

it’s only a piece of paper

It’s a BRITISH passport, that’s what it is.

“piece of paper” …………… bleedin cheek 😯

And Mohamed Al Fayed would give a lot more than 72 quid for one

‘kinell!

And Mohamed Al Fayed would give a lot more than 72 quid for one

That is so true.

How much is that groupset?!?

F*** me, that groupset is CHEAP! They were supposed to be about £1800 originally. IIRC the electronic one is over £2000.

you could get a car for that

We, Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State requests and requires in the name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary

It is a document that allows you to claim the protection of the British Crown no matter where in the world you are, to pass across international borders controlled by other sovereign nations substantially unhindered and to identify yourself in any country in the world. Looked at like that, £7.20 a year for a decade is not really all that stiff.

🙂

Flaperon – you’ve made the classic error of confusing ‘price’ with ‘cost’. They aren’t the same thing. Price rarely reflects cost, rather it reflects the value of the utility we derive from the product.
Given the value of being able to travel abroad and be guaranteed the right of return to the UK, I think you should be asking how the ‘price’ it isn’t 100 times more.

£7.20 per year! blimey how are you going to pay for your holidays after that!

£7.20 per year! blimey how are you going to pay for your holidays after that!

Last holiday I went on, the flight cost nearly that much too! I’m going to write to Gordon and complain about rip-off Britain! 😉

FFS, it’s only a piece of paper with an RFID chip stamped into it

oh wonderful. now the terrorists can target bombs to go off specifically at british passport holders. why didn’t i think of that?

Govt backdoor for the ID card. Pathetic bastards don’t have the balls to put it to the vote so are trying to sneak it through.

Mind you, its dropped off the agenda at the moment as Gordon is busy crashing banks.

Also if you are bothered do a search for ‘uk passport inflation’ and you can see that the inflation rate for the price of a UK passport is running at about 20% a year.

Aren’t the majority of people in favour of ID cards Richc? Just like they were in favour of ‘internment without charge’, i.e. holding suspects for 90 days without charge. I’m personally strongly opposed to ID cards (and the holding without charge debacle) but I was under the impression that sample polls had shown that the population would back the idea? Or am I making that up?

Gordon is busy crashing banks

He he …… so he didn’t save the banks by bailing them out – he “crashed” them ? They were perfectly viable going concerns until he came along and the government took them over ? !

Stalin would be impressed by your ability to re-write history richc ! 🙂

Probably down the questions that was asked. If you asked someone if they were in favour of ID cards that would cut crime and stop illigal immigrants from claiming benfits then more people will say yes. If you ask them whether they are willing to have their DNA stored on a database and have to pay for the privialge then I think the answers would be different. Similarly if you ask people if it is okay to lock up terroist suspects for 90days then again they are more likely to say yes. The fact that they will focus on the Terrorist part and not the suspect part is a likely reason as to why they will say yes. They are also unlikely to consider the full implications of what the laws actually mean and how they will inevitably be extended.

As an old boss of mine used to say “Joe Public is as thick as shit”

I blame Thatcher

for balance you see

How the blazes can it cost £72 to renew a passport?

That works out at a bargintastic £7.20 per year

kids passports are only 5 years for £46.00 plus all the hassle of getting an acceptable pic that is useless 12months down the line

as to ID cards – don’t see what it would do to deter the minority very happy living outside the law thank you very much – would probably just screw up some poor mum and toddlers left homeless after no money from absent dad etc etc

What’s better is the chip inside it isn’t even active or in workable order at the moment!!! BrillianT!

Whats more annoying, is we seem to be one of the only countries in the world where you can’t add more pages to your passport. Mines nearly full after a year or to’in and fro’in and they want the full price to renew it again. Everyone else just gets to staple a few more pages in.

the chips contained within passports can be cracked and altered fairly easily. you can buy the devices to do so in akihabara (not sure on spelling) market in japan.

pointless really. we are all just numbers.

esp when you consider the rest of europe can travel about on their ID cards or driving license. why should we have to carry around a book worth 72 quid when the germans carry their ID card costing around €20

It’s a free country but only if you don’t want to leave.

He he …… so he didn’t save the banks by bailing them out – he “crashed” them ? They were perfectly viable going concerns until he came along and the government took them over ? !

I don’t think Lloyds employees and shareholders would agree with you there. Its just a shame the Government didn’t know about the unsafe practices a few years ago as then they could have avoided this mess …. oh hang on they did, and then they hired one of the people used to cover it up to run the FSA.

If you don’t want to pay £72, then simply stay in the UK. Easy.

I always thought passports were way overpriced until I read the blurb when the gf renewed hers; the fee isn’t just for the passport, it is also for running consulates around the world and the assistance given to British passport holders all over the world who need it. They don’t get any money from the government directly, it all comes out of the passport fee. Which for just £72 doesn’t seem so bad.

I suppose if it were paid for from general taxation people who didn’t go anywhere or have a passport would be miffed, and rightly so; this way it’s a tax just on the people who might need assistance when abroad at some point.

Your all wrong

£72 is the current value of a British Citizen’s soul. This is the amount of money that those in charge deem you are worth. Originally they were going to pay you this amount in exchange for storing said soul on a RFID chip. Unfortunately the Government doesn’t have a mechanism in place aound passport production where they pay the great unwashed (us) so in a closed session they resolved to charge us instead. I belive the motion ‘**** it, thet’ll pay the stupid fools’ was passed by a majority vote

Its all spin folks, we don’t produce real stuff any more so we have to invent jobs.

DSS, tax offices, inland revenue call it what you will, every orgonisation has a chief exec, directors, HR departments, nice logo’s, web sites, probably fountains in the front receptions……………….. all this nonsence costs.

As for protection from the crown…… oh please, try telling that to every ex pat who gets bangged up on some trumped up charge, teddies called mohamed spring to mind !

In all seriousness Monty, would you rather be in a Sudanese prison while the British consul argued with bearded idiots, or in a sudanese prison with no-one giving a monkeys? That woman was released after two members of the House of Lords went to Sudan to shout at the president.

😕

Think of it this way. That £72 is paying for a growing public sector industry. You are contributing to our economy in a small way. Ontop of this Mandarins and Politicians enrich themselves whilst sending poorly-paid boys off to fight a senseless war in Afghanistan. This lads return home to what after they have served their country? Whereas the enriched-Mandarins have lined their nests nicely with your administration fee.

As for protection from the crown…… oh please, try telling that to every ex pat who gets bangged up on some trumped up charge, teddies called mohamed spring to mind !

Or those in Guantanamo Bay, or torture camps run by the US, in varrious parts of the World. Or the young fella facing possibly the rest of his life in jail for ‘hacking’ into US govt. computers.

Or a EU directive that allows any EU country to extradite anyone from another EU country without them having a right to trial or see the charges first.

My issue is with the “everything costs more than it should” culture we have now.

£72 for a passport……………. its too much

So, you’re problem is that you have an arbitrary idea of what things cost which has not kept pace with the 21st century. As far as I am concerned, £3.00 is “too much” for a pint of beer… 😉

Rudeboy – extradition has nothing to do with whether you hold a passport. For what it is worth, all British citizens were out of Guantanamo some while ago, and we are arguing about whether British resident non-citizens were also owed anything by government. Again, would you rather be in Guantanamo with a British passport, or with a Pakistani one (which I suspect is admittedly cheaper…)

Any one of you can of course get a passport from St. Vincent & The Grenadines for US$250,000 of investment in the sugar cane diversification trust plus processing fees, if £72 for a British one strikes you as excessive.

The passport price is a tax on leaving the country.

As UK citizens paying into the system through tax etc we have the right to protection. That is nothing to do with the fact we have bought a passport or not. The £72 for a passport is outrageous. Check the costs of passports in the rest of the world. The UK is one of the most expensive.

The day I can swap my UK passport for Citizen of Europe passport can’t come soon enough 🙂

Basic Adult passport is about equal to about 90 GBP in Australia, and we don’t have nearly as many embassies abroad. stop your whining.