It becomes more and more irritating travelling in and out of the United Kingdom. Airports are choc-a-bloc with security lines, and no liquids and pushy people who make you take off all your outer clothes. It takes hours as well. The trains, to which any reasonable European travellor had switched, are now being queued up with engine failures or fires in the Tunnel. There are tunnels and other choke points just as vulnerable all over Europe. But access through the UK tunnel is regularly causing blockages.
If I want to go anywhere in Schengen, I can fly, or get on a train, and be there in the appropriate number of hours, like getting on the bus. This is not true of England. Any journey there has a built-in delay and doubt factor. Why?
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9 comments:
In a word: jobsworths.
I have travelled the world, and the one place I now avoid like the plague is the UK. I keep saying get out while the trains are running, but it is quite ominous if all it takes is one small (but conveniently located) fire to completely close down the rail escape network.
Plan B: Buy a boat!
It's too late for most people now, I suppose Nomad. Without means to borrow or sell their house most people can no longer establish themselves elsewhere.
I think we are modelling our border security on the USA's. I was so alarmed at how I and others were addressed I had second thoughts about entering the country at Newark Airport. Certainly had to bite my tongue hard. Grim being photographed and fingerprinted and bullied after a long flight (from Italy).
I agree that it is too late for most of us to escape. Those who have the nous are too old to be acceptable elsewhere in the Anglosphere. Most of the people will not pay attention to the signs. And anyway it is going the same way in most countries. One only has to watch the behaviour of the Canadian Human Rights Commissions (see Ezra Levant for example) to know that Canada is going the same way. In many aspects New Zealand (with a longer run of Labour governments than even the UK) is there ahead of us, but on different aspects. And in the US try looking at Alex Jones' prison planet site; the police state is going nicely there.
In the UK we're stuffed both ways:
1. no way out, and
2. nowhere to go if we did get out.
One needs to be a Christian to understand why we need not be afraid.
That's right and that's what I'm hoping, HG.
The only way we can get better is by forcing our people to stand and challenge these issues.
But how smug must the escapees be feeling now ?
On the issue of travel I don't think that any public transport is run or designed with the passenger in mind. Often vehicles and infrastructure are built with cheapness in mind or - in another extreme - are put together haphazardly which is usually the most expensive and least productive in the end.
People move around a lot on career development rather than staying in one spot and seeing a project through. There seems to be no long-terminism so what we get is a hotch-potch.
Also - we're a frightfully overcrowded nation now aren't we ?
When the French chose fast trains they built the network especially. Why didn't the UK government build a proper, new network rather than the botching together of all the extant systems that were, themselves, a patchwork produced by history from the mid 1800s on? That is what a state is for - ensuring essential infrastructures. And defended borders.
This 'global' verbiage is beginning to grate. It has become the 'it's not Labour's fault' fall-back and the 'let's talk about (fill in the space - inequality, unemployment, poverty, redistributive taxation, awful education, dirt and death in the NHS....), globally.
Why should we. I like nation states; they're good and local and can be held to account. They can also up and hold others to account if need be.
No global.
E-K, people who left might have intended to have a foot in two worlds, as many of them could rightly expect, and are as concerned about their right foot as their left.
The respect in which England is held as the bastion of individual freedoms and democratic expression still protects the current regime from the lambasting they should be getting from most European countries. When what New Labour has installed with its authoritarian state is described in the sketchiest of terms, many simply will not accept what has been done. Same for the United States. Arrive on their doorstep and 'welcome' is the most unlikely word. Just abusive rudeness. England's getting like that; they type into their computers and demand information that is well outside any reasonable right to know. All the people 'stranded' in desirable parts of the world by the XL collapse - I'm surprised they aren't being driven into the sea when they can't pay, considering the way they allow those who are patiently assisting them to be treated when they present themselves at England's entry ports.
Yokel is so right. If there is nowhere to go (global ideolgy again) then there are no freedoms when we lose means of redress against an overbearing regime.
Kevin, as an "escapee", may I just say that I feel far more sadness than smugness at what the once beautiful, free and pleasant UK has become over the past decade.
Yokel, the "Anglosphere" stretches far wider than Oz, NZ and Canada and in many countries there are hundreds of opportunities awaiting those with any sort of skills or qualifications who can be bothered to make a few enquiries and then actually do something about it.
Lilith, I agree with you. The US is way up there on the list of unwelcoming countries the minute you step off the plane. 'Twas ever thus - long before all this homeland security nonsense added to the humiliations visitors are now routinely subjected to; another reason the US is, and for many years has been, off my list of destinations. I see no reason to subject myself to crass impertinence from some illiterate jobsworth from Dixie just because I want to visit the Grand Canyon for a few days.
HG, as you rightly say, us expats really do have a soft spot for the old country and used to enjoy visiting regularly. I daresay millions of us still have family or or other close connections there which occasionally "incentivised" (YUK!!) us to return for brief visits. However, I suspect that nowadays both feet are firmly on the outside of the line.
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