Border Farce

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news

More sheer incompetence.

I had to endure arriving at Heathrow this time last week, and a large swathe of the machines were not working then either.

After too long dicking about in a queue to use shit broken machines I had to join another queue to see someone at a booth (with very few booths actually being staffed).

The total lack of pragmatism exhibited during any system failure or period of unexpected demand by their vogon-like operatives is staggering. Fine, scan anyone with a 3rd country passport to keep the swivel eyed lot happy, but at least let your own people through with a visual check.  Wtaf is API for if you’re going to scan every passenger anyway?

I noticed the Dutch border police have taken to doing visual checks & stamping only on arrival into Rotterdam with full ferries.  It’s not rocket science!

Rely largely on technology and reduce staff as a result and then don’t be surprised when there’s chaos when the tech (or power supply) fails.

Most of the economy now works the same way.

That said, I know it’s the last thing you want returning from a trip abroad,  but resilience in the face of an inconvenience seems to be sadly lacking as well.

The total lack of pragmatism exhibited during any system failure or period of unexpected demand by their vogon-like operatives is staggering

The home office set the requirements for checks (for FOG documents and other markers / flags on the border system which rely on a scan) and, ultimately, are responsible for BF shift systems and payment schemes that aren’t compatible with surge activity. They are also responsible for appalling morale and the erosion of good will  across the areas of the public sector they “own”. But you go ahead and blame frontline staff as it’s obviously their fault.

Just to put the front line staff issue into context, here’s my boss slapping down Therese Coffey at a committee meeting when she talked about well paid civil servants – I’ll say again, I’ve a colleague who said it has taken them 35 years in the civil service for their wage to get DOWN to the minimum wage.

https://www.accountancydaily.co/third-hmrc-workers-paid-national-minimum-wage

Fine, scan anyone with a 3rd country passport to keep the swivel eyed lot happy, but at least let your own people through with a visual check.

I can’t see any sort of security issue with that sort of policy at all.

I’ll quite happily blame the whole lot from top down. As a customer experience it’s utterly crap. The unfriendly face of Brexit Britain. If the frontline staff were any bloody good they and their management would apologise for the delay, possibly re-route families with small children, take ownership, think outside the box. There’s no initiative, nobody speaking out, just an expressionless automaton feeding an RFID scanner. It’s like they’ve taken the recruitment policy of the American border force and decided that was too good. It’s so bad that its the good exceptions that stand out, not the bad ones – the funny ones that still have life in their eyes, who taunt your kids by addressing them with the wrong names or ask for their teddy bear’s passports, or jokingly look at the visa stamps in my work passport and go “Ooh, you’ve been there, not sure you can come in.” There’s definitely one at Hull and perhaps two at Newcastle but generally as PAX you end up thinking “are you actually human?”

those passport machines are a waste of space, common name, join the queue to see the human,

i still find the odd bellend who refuses to allow you to bypass the machines and then look like they are surprised it doesnt work for you.. still many humans who are happy to joke and smile..

how long do we give the wet lettuce before we start blaming everything on him..

I for one would be happy to avoid any staff member who thought it was funny to say “Ooh you’ve been there, not sure you can come in.”

They have wholly unaccountable power to ruin lives and do so frequently in a completely capricious and arbitrary manner. Not usually, to be fair, to white middle class professionals.

A combination of understaffing and reliance on outsourced IT systems that don’t work. It’s a classic Tory combination repeated time and time again with the same predictable results

Cool, so as long as we’re clear a British passport or something that looks like one should be considered good enough that you don’t need to check minor details like if the person holding it is actually the owner or that it’s even a genuine passport?

Don’t blame the symptom, blame the cause.

That’s not what I’m saying at all. Do a visual check, use API to generate a watch list. Don’t spend 20-30 seconds on every passport scanning it and looking it up on a slow database. How many people do you think BF detain as a security risk on a daily basis? 1000, 100, 10, 1? 10 a month? 10 a year? Is what they’re doing now actually preventing anything or just a visual officious front end for nasty politicians?

“Here we’re doing this, you see we’re making you secure, it must be secure it took you three hours to get in!”

The symptom and the cause are equally awful. The wrong staff implementing the wrong thing.

After too long dicking about in a queue to use shit broken machines I had to join another queue to see someone at a booth (with very few booths actually being staffed).

That’s what “people” voted for isn’t it?  taking back control of our borders…

I’ll say again, I’ve a colleague who said it has taken them 35 years in the civil service for their wage to get DOWN to the minimum wage.

That makes a great sounds bite, but at the risk of defending the government – that isn’t necessarily a bad thing!  Of course if its that bad you can always jump ship – after all there just became a load more jobs that will be paying the same headline rate, although work is not all about the headline rate.

Do a visual check

that doesn’t help against faked passports though.

The scanners are actually really quick when working properly (which is the majority of the time).

As mentioned earlier, people now lose their shit in the face of the slightest, occasional, inconvenience instead of just exercising patience.

A 3 hour queue after a 1 hr flight is not acceptable at all.

Russian hackers claiming it as theirs

I understand that the last day or so must’ve been pretty frustrating for travellers coming back to the UK, however, what would you have had them do differently?

The automatic gates work well for me the vast majority of times I use them (around a dozen times a year) and when they don’t work it’s either bad luck or because I’ve neglected to take off my glasses when the machine tries to recognise me.

Given the unexpected nature of this outage, and the likelihood that the scanners have been working fine up until the start of the outage, what would you have wanted them to do differently?

• Magic up a whole load of passport staff to handle the queues manually?
• Just wave folk through “because they look trustworthy” and stop anyone who looks a bit shady (that’s got all sorts of racial profiling nightmare scenarios).
• Just let everyone through because “the tech’s broken innit”?

I get that it’s bloody annoying when stuff doesn’t work but in reality what could/should they have done to make it easier for passengers given the fact that they’re trying to do their job and no one’s going to relax the rules and regulations because something’s not working?

A 3 hour queue after a 1 hr flight is not acceptable at all.

To be fair, 1hr flights shouldn’t be allowed to happen so I don’t have much sympathy.

If the frontline staff were any bloody good they and their management would apologise for the delay, possibly re-route families with small children, take ownership, think outside the box.

From the bbc;

“I was in the queue for around 90 minutes. Priority was given to families with small children and vulnerable passengers, and staff were handing out bottled water to everyone

“We were given water and were so lucky being right at the front.

Do a visual check, use API to generate a watch list. Don’t spend 20-30 seconds on every passport scanning it and looking it up on a slow database

A visual check won’t pull a fraudulently obtained genuine passport nor will it trigger warning flags on the systems.

There’s no initiative, nobody speaking out,

PCS have been taking action over staffing issues for years;

Around 250 members are being forced out of their current jobs on passport control as the Home Office have indicated they will no longer accommodate their contractual flexible working arrangements, reasonable adjustments, or ‘legacy’ contractual terms on the new roster.

She hit out at the Home Office, saying it “should be doing all it can to retain experienced, trained staff – not lose them by introducing an unworkable new roster system.”

How many people do you think BF detain as a security risk on a daily basis? 1000, 100, 10, 1? 10 a month? 10 a year? Is what they’re doing now actually preventing anything or just a visual officious front end for nasty politicians?

Last year they refused entry to 24587 people at ports of entry, an average of 67 per day…  on top of those there are a lot of UK nationals (who do have a right to enter) who get arrested on their arrival due to outstanding warrants.  Now add it the deterrent factor of these checks being done and its difficult to say they are pointless.

Brexit derangement syndrome still alive and well

Add in the fact that if we DID just wave people through in such scenarios then it doesn’t take much imagination to realise a bad actor could manufacture such a scenario to get people through who would otherwise be flagged.

Like it or not, that is what you’re risking.