Actual UK Passport Application
Apparently this letter was actually received by a passport office:
Dear Sirs,
I’m in the process of renewing my passport, and still cannot believe this. How is it that Sky Television has my address and telephone number and knows that I bought a bleeding satellite dish from them back in 1977, and yet, the Government is still asking me where I was bloody born and on what date.
For Christ sakes, do you guys do this by hand? My birth date you have on my pension book, and it is on all the income tax forms I’ve filed for the past 30 years. It is on my National Health card, my driving license, my car insurance, on the last eight damn passports I’ve had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I’ve had to fill out before being allowed off the plane over the last 30 years, and all those insufferable census forms.
Would somebody please take note, once and for all, that my mother’s name is Mary Anne, my father’s name is Robert and I’d be abso-f**king-lutely astounded if that ever changed between now and when I die!!!!!!
I apologise, I’m really pissed off this morning. Between you an’ me, I’ve had enough of this bullshit! You send the application to my house, then you ask me for my fucking address !!!!
What is going on? Do you have a gang of Neanderthal arseholes workin’ there? Look at my damn picture. Do I look like Bin Laden? I don’t want to dig up Yasser Arafat, for shit sakes. I just want to go and park my arse on some sandy beach somewhere. And would someone please tell me, why would you give a shit whether I plan on visiting a farm in the next 15 days? If I ever got the urge to do something weird to a chicken or a goat, believe you me, you’d be the last f**king people I’d want to tell!
Well, I have to go now, ’cause I have to go to the other end of the poxy city to get another f**king copy of my birth certificate, to the tune of £30. Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot to assist in the issuance of a new passport the same day?? Nooooooooooooo, that’d be too damn easy and maybe makes sense. You’d rather have us running all over the f**kin’ place like chickens with our heads cut off, then have to find some arsehole to confirm that it’s really me on the damn picture – you know, the one where we’re not allowed to smile?! (bureaucratic f**kin’ morons) Hey, do you know why we couldn’t smile if we wanted to? Because we’re totally pissed off!
Signed
An Irate Citizen.
P.S. Remember what I said above about the picture and getting someone to confirm that it’s me? Well, my family has been in this country since 1776 …….. I have served in the military for something over 30 years and have had full security clearances over 25 of those years enabling me to undertake highly secretive missions all over the world. …….. However, I have to get someone ‘important’ to verify who I am – you know, someone like my doctor WHO WAS BORN AND RAISED IN F**KING PAKISTAN !
You Should Know Who.
Will I Live To See 80?
I recently picked a new GP. After two visits and exhaustive Lab tests, he said I was doing ‘fairly well’ for my age.
A little concerned about that comment, I couldn’t resist asking him, ‘Do you think I’ll live to be 80?’
He asked, ‘Do you smoke tobacco, drink beer or wine?’
‘Oh no,’ I replied. ‘I’m not doing drugs, either!’
Then he asked, ‘Do you eat rib-eye steaks and barbecued ribs?’
I said, ‘No, my former doctor said that all red meat is very unhealthy!’
‘Do you spend a lot of time in the sun, like playing golf, sailing, hiking, or bicycling?’
‘No, I don’t,’ I said.
He asked, ‘Do you gamble, drive fast cars, or have a lot of sex?’
‘No,’ I said.
He looked at me and said,…. ‘ Then, why do you even give a damn?’
2 March 2010
I went to London today to the Law Courts Branch Meeting of the Arbitration Club. One of our members, Keith Kirkwood, very kindly met me at Bishop’s Stortford Railway Station and taxied me from Liverpool Street station to the venue and back. It was very kind of him. I discovered something entirely new today. I was aware that taxies have been fitted with hydraulic platforms that can be lowered for wheelchairs and I did not know that the dickie seat by the door actually swings out over the pavement making it very easy to mount the cab. It then swings back and clicks into place during the journey. I shall certainly be happier taking cabs in the future as a result.
It was a good meeting and I was particularly pleased to see our long serving chairman Dominic Helps looking robust after a period of ill health.
1 March 2010
Ali very kindly dropped in today to massage the fluid out of my fingers and to manipulate my shoulder joints. This needs to be done on a daily basis so I suspect’ my lovely’, and Jane will have to muck in and help. It is so obvious to me that both of these operations are clearly helpful with weak hands and arms that I find it very hard to understand why my MND team have not recommended this to me some months ago. I can certainly take it up with them on my next assessment.
28 February 2010
Delicious lunch with Ali & Graeme Macrael. Going out for a Sunday lunch is such a civilised pastime, today sadly, greatly underrated.
27 February 2010
The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has at last published some guidelines on assisted suicide. As a result, the Prime Minister suggests that this clarification under which those who assist someone to kill themselves may be prosecuted means that “the case for a change in the law is now weaker”. In other words the Prime Minister thinks we must resist the call to legalise assisted suicide .The DPP no longer considers that the prospect of prosecution is mitigated if “the victim had a terminal illness, or a severe and incurable physical disability, or a severe degenerative physical condition from which there was no possibility of recovery”. Significantly it seems that the naive assumption that a spouse who assists a suicide would always be acting compassionately has been removed and those who provide a Dignitas-style physical environment for suicide are more likely to be prosecuted. I am not sure how much further forward we are in this process but ultimately, I suppose, the matter will have to be decided by Parliament.
D. Mark Cato
D. Mark Cato