All travel plans to be tracked by Government
David Millward writes in The Daily Telegraph:
The travel plans and personal details of every holidaymaker, business traveller and day-tripper who leaves Britain are to be tracked by the Government, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.
Anyone departing the UK by land, sea or air will have their trip recorded and stored on a database for a decade.
Passengers leaving every international sea port, station or airport will have to supply detailed personal information as well as their travel plans. So-called “booze crusiers” who cross the Channel for a couple of hours to stock up on wine, beer and cigarettes will be subject to the rules.
In addition, weekend sailors and sea fishermen will be caught by the system if they plan to travel to another country – or face the possibility of criminal prosecution.
The owners of light aircraft will also be brought under the system, known as e-borders, which will eventually track 250 million journeys annually.
Even swimmers attempting to cross the Channel and their support teams will be subject to the rules which will require the provision of travellers’ personal information such as passport and credit card details, home and email addresses and exact travel plans.
The full extent of the impact of the government’s “e-borders” scheme emerged amid warnings that passengers face increased congestion as air, rail and ferry companies introduce some of the changes over the Easter holidays.
March 16th, 2009 at 21:13
At a time when the government has just incurred immense debts, which will take a generation to pay back, it makes excellent sense to start spending huge amounts of extra money in order to make a few anally retentive politicians happy.
I wonder if it will ever again be possible to have a government which aims to rule the country and keep it in a state of tolerable order, rather than spending its time arranging and itemising citizens as if they were its private stamp collection.
March 21st, 2009 at 12:47
The idiocy of this latest government proposal can be easily defeated by ‘US’ the public. If everyone who travel abroads simply refuses to comply with the questions what happens then. They cannot prosecute everyone and it will only take a small but growing number of people. These new procedures will add delays and chaos to simple trips abroad and longer journeys – we ALL HAVE to simply SAY NO.
Of course, if the number of immigration officials at the port of entry and departure had not been so severely decreased (again to save money) we would not be in the mess we are now with so many illegal immigrants entering the country. These officials were good at their jobs and able to judge who was genuine and who not – sadly all that expertise is no longer available.
I would like to know what the government are proposing to do with this information about our travel arrangements?
If someone is under surveillance because of criminal activities surely their departure from the UK would be covered anyway. So why inconvenience innocent travellers – is this a method of keeping us from travelling. Smacks of control of the population!
In fact if I recall some of the wording from the original passport document, a UK citizen was supposed to be allowed free entry and exit or words to that effect.
Again as it has been said before with such dire economic uncertainty facing this country never before since the end of the war, why is money being wasted to such a degree on this curtailment of our freedoms.
I am simply furious and angry that the citizens of the UK are ’sleepwalking’ into the 1984 nightmare without putting up a fight, and for that matter even agreeing with these restrictions in some quarters.
What we are facing now is illegal immigrants entering at will, and the population of the UK being restricted when leaving. Sounds like a Marx Brothers movie.