Anyone making the evening journey from Paris’ sprawling Aéroport Charles de Gaulle back to the rather more humble Liverpool
Airport – as around 140 punters did yesterday, courtesy of EasyJet – will have
noticed the one thing that makes travel to and from the UK so different to that
around EU member states and other countries that have signed up to the Schengen
agreement. It’s called queuing.
There in CDG
Terminal 2D, passengers joining EasyJet inter-Schengen flights went from
security to boarding. We UK-bound people had to also submit our passports to a
bored-looking French border guard. Because we’re not signing up to Schengen, as
we want to remain in glorious isolation and keep out all these rotten
foreigners. And immigrants. And security hazards. To keep control of our borders, dammit.
Then, on arrival at
Liverpool, the flight takes around 25 minutes to clear the UK Border. OK, it
only took me 20 minutes of my life that I won’t be getting back, but the sheer
pointlessness should be screamingly obvious to anyone with a hole in their
backside. Every passport fed through the scanner. As if the security agencies
that we now know are snooping on us might have missed something.
And if the likes of
Nigel “Thirsty” Farage get their
hands on the levers of power, this farce is set to get a whole lot worse. Not
for nothing do folks return from the USA with tales of it taking three hours or
more to get from landing to exiting the terminal building. With the inter-connectedness
of the EU, Schengen makes sense, and not just for individuals, but businesses
too.
Talking of
businesses, one that suffers from the Great British Obsession with border
controls – and will continue so to do – is rail travel, with airline-level
check-in times at St Pancras, Paris Nord and Brussel Zuid, combined with yet
more sodding passport checks and intrusive personal searches, none of which
would prevent a serious terrorist attack – like one aimed at the line the train
travels on.
Over at Paris Est,
the trains departing for destinations in Germany do not leave from securely
fenced-off platforms, and nor do those from Paris Nord to Belgium and the
Netherlands. Even before Schengen, border controls were being done more and
more on the move. Eurostar could do this. The UK obsession will not permit it.
Two and a quarter hours London to Paris becomes well over three hours.
That hurts competitiveness.
It drives visitors away. It deters businesses from locating here. After all,
who wants to set up in a country that might walk away from the European club,
just to appease the party of an ale-swilling Grade A spiv? Next time you fly
EasyJet, look at the flag painted next to the plane’s registration mark. It
used to be the Union Flag. It’s now the EU one. They’ve made their choice
already.
Somebody is trying
to tell the politicians something. But
they aren’t listening.
Just got back Eurostar from Brussels. FOUR queues!!!
ReplyDeleteFirst Belgian police passport check. Then UKBA passport check, then security scan (and then run to the train because the checks have taken so long it's going to be late). And then we arrived at St Pancras, and because of the "Lille Loophole" that the glorious British Press missed for 17 years, we have to do UKBA checks again. That's annoying, but it gets worse. Because the St Pancras checks are run as badly as those at most UK airports they can't clear people as fast as the moving walkway is feeding them into the hall. So now it's getting dangerous as well. A couple of years ago I had a similar experience at Liverpool airport, the queue was backed up onto a steep and turning stairway. What will the view of UKIP/Mail be if something goes wrong and someone (probably a white British old lady) does get crushed??