Just saying.

Nearer to the topic, the way to get decent treatment from anybody’s immigration service is not to enter at huge busy tourist airports.

Last time I went to the US, I flew to Canada and then drove into the US at a tiny border crossing. The staff there were friendly, polite, and helpful; the whole experience was as near to pleasurable as such things can be.

Of course, I do appreciate that – Britain being an island and all that – my advise isn’t applicable in the current case!

You'll never have to worry about seeing a BA man again! :);. All the best!!

Good shout, Tom. Brazil is my #1 fave movie. Gordy Brown’s cabinet’s training video.

Congratulations on your nuptials, Bella.

I find it creepy that we now have Border Agents and not Immigration staff. Pretty soon they’ll be quizzing us as we leave.

Anyway, all that fuss and only 2100 people stopped. I wonder what that works out on a per person stopped. It would probably be cheaper to let them in and give them benefits.

Fortunately, the officer in the other half of the same booth piped up to say his son went to summer camp there every year. It was a curious mix of hard-assness and down-home friendliness…

But I just get the feeling that, like so many other home-grown bureaucrats, they’re playing at being ‘serious’ and ‘tough’, and, of course, they’re absolutely crap at it. They may want to look like Sylvester Stallone on a bad day, but it’s hard to do this when you’re a balding, weedy, forty-something, wearing a Primark short-sleeved jumper over an ill-fitting shirt and crappily-knotted tie.

And it just makes you want to take them on. If you have the temerity to suggest how shambolic the whole affair is you just get the now routine, defensive accusation that you’re being ‘aggressive’. This can be tricky because although it’s easy to see what insipid jobsworths they are, one shouldn’t, I suppose, harbour the delusion that they’re not still capable of the sort of vindictiveness which leads to you ending your protest or contretemps with a torch shone up your arse or missing your connection.

My guess is they’re unsuccessfully trying to ape their counterparts in the USA: the ones who do sinister really, really well. No Primark jumpers for them; rather, they sport those scary, dark blue uniforms (how do they get their creases so sharp?), bristling with badges, medals and sundry instruments, the purpose of which, no doubt, is to inflict pain and/or humiliation. They work from booths upon which, prominently displayed, are signs saying (and I paraphrase) you’re welcome in the USA; we’re here to serve; we will be efficient, polite and treat you like you’re human. All this, of course, as they carry out their business silently, using only a forefinger to indicate each part of the process.

And they do this, each surrounded by an aura such as that generated by the road boss in Cool Hand Luke.

UK Border Agency to note. If you’re going to try and be hard, no more Primark jumpers.

Provincial airports can be even worse than the London ones – half wit ‘scurritee and scowling, staring officialdom seem the rule.

You seem to like it here – I’m a native – and I’ve seen enough – I’m off.

JuliaM beat me to it though, you are “low hanging fruit” as far as the BA are concerned because you try to stay within the law and subject yourself to their authoritay…

The last time I talked to a border agent I asked her whether the book she was reading was any good.

My boss had a similar deal with the HSA/INS in the USA where the morons had a problem with the idea that a trip could be for both business and pleasure and thus considered that he was lying. Thereafter he gets interrogated specially every time he goes into the US.

In both cases the reason is that what is noted is a flag by the passport numebr that says “problem” without saying what the problem is.